Unit 5: Preparation part 2

1. Organizing Your Thoughts

When you have chosen the topic of your presentation and narrowed it down to suit the audience and fit the time limit, you are ready to start organizing your thoughts and materials. One of the most popular ways of doing this is by creating a mind map, which is a diagram that presents your thoughts and ideas visually. You start by putting a central idea in the middle of the page and then continue adding ideas to it, based on your associations.

Then you can proceed to organizing your ideas according to the order you have decided upon (topical or chronological). Decide which ideas or arguments are the most important ones and which can be used as clarification points or further arguments. Is there one idea that you should start with and place it in the introduction of your speech?

There are several options possible:

• Organize your material starting with the most important, then follow with the less important ideas.
• Within the problem/solution speech, the best idea is to start with the description of a problem and then suggest solutions. ou may propose several different ways of solving a particular problem and then decide on the best one. You may also include a description of the cause of the problem and ecide what should be done to avoid such situations in the future.