Specific Purpose

Your specific purpose helps focus your topic. It spells out what you want your listeners to understand, believe, feel, or do. Having a specific purpose clearly in mind helps direct your research toward relevant information so that you don’t waste valuable time. You should be able to state your specific purpose clearly as a single idea. Let’s look at how a specific purpose statement gives focus to your speech:
General function: To persuade
Specific purpose:
To persuade my audience that global warming poses a serious threat to our environment
How can you tell if you have a good specific purpose? Your specific purpose should ensure that you provide listeners with new or useful informatioii or advice. When you tell listeners something they already know, you simply bore them and waste their time. Your specific purpose also should be manageable in the time allotted to you. In a five-minute speech you have only about seven hundred words to get your message across. If you can’t cover the material in the time allowed, then you must narrow your focus to something you can handle. Let’s look at some examples of poor specific purpose statements and see how they might be improved:
Topic: National parks
General function: To inform

Specific purpose: To inform my audience about hiking trails in Shenandoah National Park

Topic: Global warming

General function: To persuade
Specific purpose: To persuade my audience that global warming poses a serious threat to our environment

How can you tell if you have a good specific purpose? Your specific purpose should ensure that you provide listeners with new or useful information or advice. When you tell listeners something they already know, you simply bore them and waste their time. Your specific purpose also should be manageable in the time allotted to you. In a five-minute speech you have only about seven hundred words to get your message across. If you can’t cover the material in the time allowed, then you must narrow your focus to something you can handle.