Begin your speech with an effective attention-getting remark that focuses your audience on your topic. Make sure this statement broadly covers your topic without speaking directly to one of the points in your speech. If your speech topic centers around the effects of pollution, use a quotation that describes the overall pollution situation or make a personal statement about your audience's connection to pollution.
Use PowerPoint or a similar presentation assistant and prepare a visual aid to support your speech topic. Select an image that demonstrates the severity of your topic for display during your introduction. You can include your speech topic on the screen but avoid using other words, long quotes or statistics for your introduction slide to avoid drawing your audience's attention away from you and toward your image. For your pollution topic, you may select an image of a landfill or cluttered beach with your speech topic displayed across the top of the image.
Introduce yourself and establish your authority. State your name for your audience and include information about your experience with your topic. Include work you have done in your topic area as well as the research time you have put into your topic. If you are a student working on your pollution topic, you can include the research hours you put into your speech as well as time from other classes and any groups or affiliations involved in neighborhood cleanups or recycling programs.
Explain your topic's background in a few general statements. Explain the scope of your topic and your reasons for focusing on the specific area that you chose. For your pollution topic, explain that pollution is a growing problem and that few outside of the green community actively work to curtail the increase in global pollution.
Define your topic in a carefully constructed thesis statement. Include each of your main points that you intend to expand upon during your speech, in the order in which you intend to present them. Your pollution thesis may be written as, "I intend to discuss the global increase of pollution, the failings of current policies to curtail this increase and the potential dangers if nothing is done to correct this problem." Be specific with your thesis statement.