9.2 Basic Organizational Patterns
Basic organizational patterns provide a simple structure to develop the main body sections of a speech. You can use these in any presentation, depending on the goals.
Chronological: ideas are presented based on their occurrence over time. For example, major events in EV technology history would be presented according to the years of occurrence and often oldest to most current.
Logical (cause-effect/effect-cause, problem-solution): ideas are presented to provide a logical sequence and establish a relationship between the ideas presented. For example, in a presentation explaining the failure of a piece of technology, the speaker might describe what happened (effect) and then discuss the reasons the failure occurred (cause).
Spatial: ideas are presented based on their physical relationship with one another. For example, to explain how an engine works, a speaker might show an image of an engine with major parts involved in its function, then describe how the engine works by referring to the various parts and how they work together in a sequence to make the engine operate. Similarly, while organizing content about a speech on the digestive system, the speaker might describe how food travels through the digestive system beginning from when it is swallowed and through the digestive process, describing the various organs and processes in the order of digestion.
Topical: ideas are presented that are most important/priorities for the audience to know about the subject based on the overall goals of the presentation. For example, to explain the impact of AI on an industry, a speaker would identify the top three ways AI is currently impacting the industry and present those in the main body section of the speech.
This section is adapted from Organizing and Outlining Your Speech in Exploring Public Speaking: The open educational resource college public speaking textbook (Edition 4.2) copyright © 2019 by Barbara Tucker, Kristin Barton, Amy Burger, Jerry Drye, Cathy Hunsicker, Amy Mendes, and Matthew LeHew, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, except where otherwise noted.
