hooks get your audience’s attention!. a good speech starts with a good hook! use the first few...
TRANSCRIPT
Hooks
Get your audience’s ATTENTION!
A GOOD SPEECH starts with a GOOD HOOK!
• Use the first few sentences to capture your audience’s attention!
• The hook must be interesting, thought provoking (or clever), AND it must also be relevant.
• It should lead the listener in the direction of your topic.
Every Speech Needs a Good Hook!The hook can:
– Identify the larger problem– Present a hypothetical situation– Offer a compelling image or idea– Grab the listeners’ sympathies or emotions.
It can also make them laugh!– It can make the audience want to know
more!** Always feel free to rewrite the hook once you’ve
finished your speech and know what direction the speech will take.
9 Types of Hooks:1.) Shocking Statistic: Google Search Shocking Epidemic
Statistics– “In 1347 The Black Death, or Bubonic
Plague killed between 25 and 50% of the population of Europe. That would be at least 30 million people or roughly the combined population of the states of New York and Pennsylvania in 2013!
The speech topic does not need to be about the Black Death of 1347! With what topics could this shocking statistic be used?
2) Create a Tone/ Mood: Google Search: 9/11 Eyewitness accountOn the street I saw crowds of people looking
south. I looked up and saw gaping holes in both towers. As you looked more closely you began to see little things flying down, and then you realized they were bodies of people who had jumped from the building. I saw the somersaults, the floating bodies. It was like they were in slow motion, sort of turning around. You had to think there must have been such total desperation.
(This was the eyewitness account of investment banker Richard Egües, 34, as he emerged from the downtown 2 subway line to walk toward his office at the World Financial Center.
The speech topic does not need to be about the horror of 9/11. With what other topics could this evocative quote connect?
3.) Simile/ Metaphor Google Search: Metaphors and Similes tragic, historic, emotional
The Nazis invaded Poland like food coloring entering a jar of clear water.
*** Most of us have found ourselves washed
away, overcome by a flood of punishing thoughts and feelings. Picture a desperate man being swept down a river, grabbing on to whatever comes along, and it's easy to see how we end up clinging to things that - rather than saving us - actually serve to further sink us.
4.) Definition/History: Google Search: History, Derivision Bully
The word "bully" was first used in English in the 1530s, and it meant "sweetheart", applied to either sex, from the Dutch word buhlel which meant either "lover,” or “ brother.”
The meaning changed through the 17th century, though, to become synonymous with "fine fellow", "blusterer", to "harasser of the weak".
The verb "to bully" first appeared in writing around 1710, and it meant roughly the same as it does today: repeated, aggressive behavior intended to hurt another person,--physically or mentally as a way to display or feel one’s own power.
Ask yourself if there is a key term in your topic that should be definedfor your audience. Then do some research to find an interesting way topresent it.
5.) In the Middle of the Action (in medias res): Google Search Current event sports
• “WASHINGTON — When the 2007 baseball season began, Alex Rodriguez was still one of the sport’s untarnished stars, the home-run-hitting antidote to Barry Bonds and other sluggers who had already been linked to the use of performance-enhancing substances.
• That season, playing third base for the Yankees, Rodriguez led the major leagues with 54 home runs and 156 runs batted in, and he went on to be awarded with his third Most Valuable Player award. After the season, he audaciously opted out of his existing 10-year contract, which had been the biggest one in the sport, and then signed an even larger deal to stay with the Yankees, this time for $275 million over 10 years.
• But what has not been known until now is that Rodriguez, during that standout season, took the performance-enhancing drug testosterone with the blessing of the doctor who oversaw Major League Baseball’s drug-testing program.
Something like this could be used to introduce speeches about sports,corruption, comparison to other sports figures, performance-enhancing drugs, etc.
Source: Michael S. Schmidt NYT July 2014
6. A shocking statement: Google Search: Shocking statement about football
Bigger, stronger and faster football players are going to kill the sport.
At least that's what Lem Barney believes."The game is becoming more deadly today," said
the Pro Football Hall of Famer. "It's a great game. I think it's the greatest game time for yester-year's gladiators. But I can see in the next 10 to maybe 20 years, society will get rid of football altogether.“
Does the opening hypothetical statement shock/alarm/surprise you? If so, it will probably have a similar effect on your audience.
7.) Anecdote: A short tale narrating an interesting incident that is related to the topic of the essay.
Not long after Albert Einstein fled from Nazi Germany, one hundred German professors published a book -One Hundred Authors Against Einstein-condemning his theory of relativity. "If I were wrong," Einstein said in response, "one professor would have been enough.“
Could you use this story to suit a science/math topic, or even a current event situation in which someone or something is being universally criticized, or a theory debunked?
8.) Set-up and Question: Google Search Obesity quotations
“Last month, I saw a group of very large people in their 20s being interviewed on some TV talk show. Every one of them said that they love being fat and eating…that they are living life fully and having fun! Well…I love eating too… but being fat? Is it really that fun to not be able to run or fit through door ways...? Ever…?
How could you use this type of rhetorical question to begin your speech?You would start your audience thinking before you presented your mainpoints.
9. Humorous: Google Search Humor, quipsMake a funny statement/use a humorous quotation (relating in
some logical way to your topic) to entice the reader to continue listening.
Who was the first person to look at a cow and say, "I think I'll squeeze these dangly things here and drink what comes out"?
How could you use a humorous quip like this for a topic unrelated to cows?
10) Problem- Describes a problem the writer will solve in the presentation. Google Search: Potential disasters involving drinking water
“Providing a plentiful supply of clean drinking water in the middle of a desert wasteland is a problem that must be solved, if the entire population of the world is going to survive into the middle of the 21st Century.”
I just made this one up, so don’t worry…yet! But you, too, can pose a scenario leading to an ultimate thrilling or horrific conclusion to engage your listener’s self-interest or sense of involvement.
Activity and Homework:• Review the 10 types of “hooks”.• Brainstorm with a partner ways in which
your topic might use one or more of these hook “types.”
• Have your partner write a possible hook, or at least sketch out the idea of one, while you do the same for him/her.
• At home, do some research to find relevant quotations, anecdotes, statistics, and write an opening paragraph for your Graduation Speech to be turned in on _________.
SUBMISSION: 1.Type--double-spaced.2.Header: Name Date Your 11th grade Research Paper topic3. In your paragraph, put any direct quotations
(primary and/ or secondary) in italics and cite your source (name, publication, date, web address, if applicable), even if you adapted the original quotation to make it your own.