attention getter examples for informative speech

Instead of dropping some of them so that his hand would fit, he burst into tears and cried about his predicament.

But when he tried to pull them out, his hand wouldn’t fit through the neck of the pitcher because he was grasping so many filberts. The boy grabbed as many of the delicious nuts as he possibly could. The ancient Greek writer Aesop told a fable about a boy who put his hand into a pitcher of filberts. Let’s now examine how we can make the transition from the parable or fable attention-getter to the topic: The fourth sentence then introduces the actual topic of the speech. In this example, the third sentence here explains that the attention-getter was an anecdote that illustrates a real issue. We are so wired into our technology that we forget to see what’s going on around us-like a big hole in front of us. This anecdote illustrates the problem that many people are facing in today’s world. Not paying attention to the world around her, she took a step and fell right into an open manhole. In July 2009, a high school girl named Alexa Longueira was walking along a main boulevard near her home on Staten Island, New York, typing in a message on her cell phone.

Let’s look at the first anecdote example to demonstrate how we could go from the attention-getter to the topic. For example, both of the anecdote examples (the girl falling into the manhole while texting and the boy and the filberts) need further explanation to connect clearly to the speech topic (i.e., problems of multitasking in today’s society). However, some attention-getters need further explanation to get to the topic of the speech. In this case, the attention-getter clearly flows directly to the topic. For example, if you look at the attention-getting device example under historical reference above, you’ll see that the first sentence brings up the history of the Vietnam War and then shows us how that war can help us understand the Iraq War. Often the attention-getter and the link to topic are very clear. The link to topic is the shortest part of an introduction and occurs when a speaker demonstrates how an attention-getting device relates to the topic of a speech. After the attention-getter, the second major part of an introduction is called the link to topic.

Attention getter examples for informative speech