Our society needs high-quality information, and one way of producing and delivering it is through the informative speech--a speech that defines, clarifies, instructs, or explains.

When giving a speech, one of the speaker's goals should be to attract and maintain attention by presenting information that is relevant and interesting to the audience. The speaker should work to increase understanding through careful language choices, coherent organization, and the use of illustrations and examples. Finally, the speaker should use emphasis and repetition to help the audience retain the information.

There are numerous strategies for presenting information. Definitions, which explain the meaning of a word or phrase, can be done using etymology, the study of the origin and development of words, example, something used to illustrate a point, comparison, which points out the similarities between two or more things, contrast, which points out the differences, or function, which shows how a thing performs or how it can be used. Descriptions, which provide a mental image of something experienced, can be accomplished using size, shape, weight, color, composition, or fit. Explanations, the process of making something clear, can occur by using numbers, connecting the known with the unknown, and repeating and reinforcing ideas.

Regardless of the type of informative speech, arousing interest in your topic is essential. We discussed arousing curiosity, presenting anecdotes, building anticipation, building suspense, and a variety of other techniques. More often than not, just as speakers should use more than one strategy to clarify or explain an idea, they need to use more than a single strategy for arousing interest in their topic.

A speaker can get his or her audience involved in the speech by thinking about listeners at all stages in the development of the speech. There are methods for doing this that do not ask for listeners' overt physical or mental involvement, such as selecting an interesting topic and examples, choosing a simple and clear organizational pattern, and using transitions. Three methods that do involve overt physical and mental involvement are inviting volunteers to participate in the speech, asking rhetorical questions, and soliciting questions from the audience.