Text Types - Speech (Concept)
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Nonjabulo HappinessText Types - Speech (Concept)
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Nonjabulo HappinessConcept
These are some concepts you should take into consideration with every text type. Different
text types have different audiences, different registers and different purposes. Let’s think
about the audience, register and purpose of a speech.
Audience: Who are you writing for when you are writing a speech? When writing a speech,
you can assume that your audience is generally an educated group of people who are
capable of understanding more elaborate language. Remember that the writing task will
specify who your audience is for your speech. Your audience could range from your
classmates to your school board members.
Register: What is really meant by register? Language register is the level of formality that
you will employ in your writing; this determines the vocabulary, structure and even some
grammatical aspects of your writing. The register for a speech is semi-formal to informal;
however, you should try not to be very informal as this is still an academic writing task.
Semi-formal register allows you to use phrasal verbs, contractions and some idioms; your
sentences should still be longer and more complex. As for informal register, it allows you to
use shorter, simpler sentences, exclamatory sentences, more phrasal verbs and idioms.
Remember though, when you are writing a blog as an IB exam task, you should still aim to
have a semi-formal register rather than an informal one. As the speech is a text type that is
originally meant to be delivered orally rather than in writing, a semi-formal to informal register
is common as these tend to be more conversational. Another thing to keep in mind is that an
informal register allows you to use the first-person pronoun freely, and this will come in very
handy when you are writing your speech, as you may want to include an anecdote or two to
engage your audience!
Purpose: What is the purpose of your writing? Are you trying to inform your audience,
persuade them or merely to entertain them? A piece of writing could have more than one
purpose; for example, a speech can aim to inform the audience about a certain issue in
order to persuade them to take action; in another instance, a speech could be informative
while at the same time aiming to entertain the audience.
