Knowing Your Genre: The Three Types of Speeches

Before you start writing a speech, there’s one surprisingly important question to answer:

What exactly am I trying to make my audience do? Learn something? Change their mind? Feel something? Understanding speech types is like having a GPS for your content. Each type serves a different purpose and follows a unique structure.

Different speeches ask different things from an audience, which means they need different structures.

1. Informative Speeches: The Teacher's Approach

Purpose: Teach your audience something they didn’t know, or help them understand something they only knew on the surface.

An informative speech shouldn’t just become a Wikipedia page read aloud. Your job is to take information, organize it, and make it easy to follow.

There are several ways to structure one:

Chronological: Past → Present → Future (Best when your topic has changed over time, something like censorship of media works well here )

Categorical: Idea 1 → Idea 2 → Idea 3 (Best when your topic has several distinct components, an example can be the three branches of the government)

Cause and Effect: Why it happens → What it causes (Best when you’re explaining a phenomenon)

Let's explore one of these structures using an example.

Example: The Evolution of Video Games

Past: Early arcade games like Pac-Man introduced simple mechanics and pixelated worlds.

Present: Games like Minecraft and Fortnite have become social platforms, creative spaces, and even professional careers through esports.

Future: Artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and player-generated worlds could make games increasingly personalized and immersive.

Notice that each section answers the same larger question: How have video games evolved?

That connection matters. An informative speech should feel like one idea unfolding not three interesting facts that happened to be standing next to each other.

2. Argumentative Speeches: The Problem-Solver's Method

Purpose: Convince your audience that a problem matters, a position is reasonable, or a particular action should be taken. Argumentative speeches require more than explaining an issue. You’re building a case.

A useful structure is: Problem / Cause → Impact → Solution

You first establish that the problem exists. Then explain why it is happening, why the audience should care, and what can realistically be done about it.

Example: Fast Fashion

Problem: Clothing is increasingly produced cheaply and discarded quickly.

Cause: Rapidly changing social-media trends and low-cost production encourage consumers to treat clothing as disposable.

Impact: Individuals accumulate clothing they rarely wear, while discarded textiles contribute to enormous amounts of waste.

Solution: Consumers can buy fewer, longer-lasting pieces, while companies and policymakers can encourage more sustainable production and recycling.

But here’s the important part: a solution only works if you have already convinced the audience that the problem deserves solving.

Imagine spending three minutes proposing better recycling programs when your audience still isn’t convinced textile waste is a serious issue. You’ve given them an answer to a question they weren’t asking.

Build the case first. Then solve it.

3. Narrative Speeches: The Storyteller's Power

Purpose: Use a story or personal experience to communicate a larger idea.

Narrative speeches are often mistaken for simply telling the audience something interesting that happened to you. That’s only half the job. Your story should reveal something beyond the story itself. A simple narrative structure is: Before → Moment of Change → After

Before: Who were you, and what did you believe?

Moment of Change: What happened that challenged or changed that belief?

After: What did you understand differently because of it?

For example, imagine telling a story about losing an important competition.

The point probably isn’t: “I entered a competition. I lost. I was sad. The end.” The stronger story asks what the loss revealed. Maybe you realized how much of your identity depended on winning. Maybe losing forced you to redefine success. Maybe it changed how you later coached someone else through failure.

Now, the story isn’t just about your competition. It’s about ambition, disappointment, identity, resilience or something else your audience recognizes in themselves. That’s the secret to a strong narrative speech:

The story may be personal. The meaning shouldn’t be.

Choosing Your Type

Before writing, finish this sentence:

“By the end of my speech, I want my audience to ______.”

If your answer is:

“Understand something.” → Informative

“Believe something or take action.” → Argumentative

“Feel or reflect on something.” → Narrative

Because before deciding what goes into your speech, you need to know where the speech is going. Otherwise, even the best writing is just very eloquently lost.