A speech introduction has four parts: an attention getter, a credibility statement that says why you can speak on the topic, a thesis that states your central idea or your ask, and a preview of your main points. In a five-minute speech all four usually fit in 30 to 45 seconds, about 65 to 110 words. The 15 introductions below label every part, from the first line to the turn into the body.
This page covers the whole opening. If you only need the first line, attention getters for speeches sorts 60 of them by type. The people, places and numbers in the examples here are invented, so keep the structure and use your own facts.
From the first line to the main point
Here is one complete introduction, for a five-minute class speech, with two extra lines labeled: the moment the audience learns why they should care, and the line that hands over to the body.
1. Informative speech
Attention. “Last February, our street was the last one in Stellwood to be plowed. It took three days. So I asked the city why.”
Why it matters to you. “If you live on a side street, you probably waited too.”
Credibility. “I spent a morning with Ms. Rautio, who has run the city's snow crews for fourteen years, and I read all forty pages of the snow plan.”
Thesis. “The order isn't random. Every street has a priority number, and three questions decide it: who needs the road, how steep it is and how far it is from the garage.”
Preview. “I'll cover the three priority levels, how a plow route is built, and the one thing that slows a plow more than snow.”
Into the body. “Let's start with priority one.”
Why it works. The hook is a complaint most of the room shares, and “So I asked the city why” turns it into an investigation. The second line is where the audience learns why they should care: the wait was theirs too. Credibility comes from legwork, not a title: a morning with a named source and a document most people never open. The thesis answers the hook's question without arguing for a policy, which keeps the speech informative, and the preview ends on a small mystery the audience will wait for. The last line tells the room the introduction is over. The relevance line and the handover add about fifteen words; when time is tight, fold the relevance into the hook, as most of the examples below do. Many of the 150 informative speech topics can be opened the same way: start from a question your audience has already asked.
The four parts of an introduction
| Part | Its job | Sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| PartAttention getter | Its jobMakes the room want to listen | Sounds likeA story begun mid-moment, a real question, one number, a contrast |
| PartCredibility | Its jobGives one reason to trust you on this topic | Sounds like“I spent a morning with the snow crews.” “I'm her nephew.” “I wrote that email.” |
| PartThesis | Its jobStates the central idea or the ask in one sentence | Sounds like“The council should…” “Every street has a priority number.” “This award belongs to…” |
| PartPreview | Its jobNames the main points in the order you'll cover them | Sounds like“Three things: A, B and C.” “One story about each of them, then a toast.” |
Some course outlines add a fifth line between the attention getter and the credibility statement: a relevance statement saying why the topic matters to this audience. The plowing example gives it a sentence of its own; in the fourteen below, that job is folded into the hook or the thesis. Credibility is what rhetoric calls ethos, the first of the three classical appeals, and in a short speech it rarely needs more than a sentence.
| Speech | Attention getter | Length |
|---|---|---|
| Speech1. Informative speech | Attention getterA shared complaint | Length5 min |
| Speech2. Persuasive speech | Attention getterContrast | Length6 min |
| Speech3. Demonstration speech | Attention getterBefore and after | Length5 min |
| Speech4. Self-introduction | Attention getterSurprising fact | Length3 min |
| Speech5. Business presentation | Attention getterOne number | Length10 min |
| Speech6. Pitch to investors | Attention getterStory | Length5 min |
| Speech7. Conference talk | Attention getterBold claim | Length20 min |
| Speech8. Training session | Attention getterThe audience in the story | Length20 min |
| Speech9. Fundraising appeal | Attention getterQuotation | Length6 min |
| Speech10. Wedding toast | Attention getterStory with a joke | Length4 min |
| Speech11. Eulogy | Attention getterA shared memory | Length5 min |
| Speech12. Retirement tribute | Attention getterA number that's a joke | Length5 min |
| Speech13. Award acceptance | Attention getterSelf-deprecating story | Length3 min |
| Speech14. Graduation speech | Attention getterA class memory | Length5 min |
| Speech15. Introducing a speaker | Attention getterA moment with their work | Length90 sec |
Introductions for class speeches
Class speeches are graded on structure, so all four parts should be easy to hear. The plowing speech above is one common assignment; these three cover the others.
2. Persuasive speech
Attention. “In Willow Bend, you can legally keep a pot-bellied pig, two pythons and a beehive in your backyard. You cannot keep a chicken.”
Credibility. “I spent every summer from ten to seventeen on my aunt's farm, where I looked after eleven hens, and this fall I read the poultry rules of the six towns that border ours.”
Thesis. “The town council should let residents keep up to four hens, no roosters, on any lot over a quarter acre, with a $25 permit.”
Preview. “I'll take the three worries I hear most, noise, smell and rats, and show you how each of those six towns handles them.”
Why it works. The contrast makes the current rule look odd before any argument is made. The thesis is a policy with numbers in it, something the council could pass as written. The preview turns the audience's objections into the main points, a structure that suits a room that leans against you. And the credibility is double: experience with hens, and research on the neighbors.
3. Demonstration speech
Attention. [Holds up a crumpled sheet.] “For twenty years, this is how every fitted sheet in my apartment looked: a ball at the back of the closet.” [Holds up a neat square.] “This is the same kind of sheet, forty seconds later.”
Credibility. “My uncle Rafael ran the laundry at a two-hundred-room hotel for eleven years, and he taught me this one Thanksgiving, with a sheet still warm from the dryer.”
Thesis. “A fitted sheet only looks impossible. Once the corners go inside each other, it folds like any other rectangle.”
Preview. “Four moves: find the corners, tuck them together, square the edges, fold it small. Then you'll try it with the sheets under your chairs.”
Why it works. In a demonstration speech the attention getter can be the result, before and after, held up side by side. The preview numbers the steps so the audience can count along, and the promise that they'll try it themselves keeps every eye on your hands. It is one of the demonstration speech topics with a visible result, which is what makes the before-and-after hook possible.
4. Self-introduction speech
Attention. “I've moved eleven times and lived in four countries, so I can ask where the bathroom is in five languages and say almost nothing else in three of them.”
Credibility. “I'm Noor Rahimi, a second-year nursing student.”
Thesis. “All that moving taught me one thing: learn the bus routes before you learn anyone's name.”
Preview. “So, in three minutes: where I've lived, why I chose nursing, and one favor I need.”
Why it works. In a self-introduction the “thesis” is the one idea you want people to remember about you. A list of facts (major, hometown, hobbies) tends to fade by lunch; one surprising fact and one lesson drawn from it are easier to keep. Credibility is simply your name and context, said once. The preview promises an ending with a favor to ask, which gives classmates a reason to talk to you afterward.
Introductions for work and public talks
At work, the audience wants to know what you need from them, so the thesis comes sooner and the hook is shorter.
5. Business presentation
Attention. “In the third quarter we refunded $212,000. That's more than in all of last year.”
Credibility. “My team handled every one of those 3,400 refund requests, and for the last six weeks we've tagged each one by its cause.”
Thesis. “Most of the increase comes from one place: the delivery estimate on our checkout page, which has been wrong since the warehouse move in July.”
Preview. “I'll show you the numbers, how we traced the cause and a fix that takes one sprint. At the end, I'll ask you for a decision today.”
Why it works. A leadership team usually wants the bottom line first, so the number and the cause both arrive before the first slide, the same order as a news story's inverted pyramid. Credibility is the data the speaker's team owns, not a job title. The preview warns the room that a decision is coming, which makes people listen for the information they'll need to make it.
6. Pitch to investors
Attention. “At 6:10 this morning, Teresa Alvarez, a home-care nurse in Tucson, had nine patients on her list, a paper map on the passenger seat and no good way to decide what order to see them in.”
Credibility. “I was a home-care nurse for seven years. My cofounder, Ben Quintero, spent five years building routing software for delivery fleets.”
Thesis. “Routewell plans a nurse's day in under a minute and gives her back about an hour of it, every day.”
Preview. “I'll show you the problem in numbers, the product, what happened in our first ninety days with two agencies, and what we're raising.”
Why it works. The pitch opens on one person with the problem at a specific minute of the day, which makes a market feel like a morning. Credibility is founder fit in two sentences: one cofounder knows the job, the other knows the software. The thesis is a one-line value proposition with a number in it, and the preview follows a familiar order: problem, product, traction, ask.
7. Conference talk
Attention. “Last year, our newsroom stopped sending a reporter to every city council meeting. Our coverage of the council got better.”
Credibility. “I'm the editor of the Bellmont Courier, a daily with eleven reporters in a city of about ninety thousand people. Every hour a reporter spends in a meeting room is an hour we can't spend anywhere else.”
Thesis. “Showing up isn't coverage. Readers want to know what a decision will do to them, and that story is almost never written in the meeting.”
Preview. “I'll show you what we stopped doing, what we did with the hours, and the three numbers we watched to find out whether it worked. You'll leave with a one-page plan you can try next month.”
Why it works. A bold claim with a result attached, aimed at an assumption every journalist in the room holds. The credibility statement does a second job: the small staff explains why the experiment was necessary. Conference audiences judge a talk by what they can use on Monday, so the preview promises something to take home.
8. Training session
Attention. “Last month, fourteen people in this building clicked a link in an email saying their parking permit was about to expire. The email was ours. It was a test.”
Credibility. “I'm Jae-won Park from the IT security team. I wrote that email, and I've spent nine years reading the real ones.”
Thesis. “Almost every phishing email tries to make you hurry, and the habit that beats it takes ten seconds: stop and check who really sent it.”
Preview. “In the next twenty minutes: three signs of a phishing email, what to do if you've already clicked, and how to report one in two clicks.”
Why it works. Mandatory training starts with a room that expects to be bored. This hook tells people they were already part of the story, and people rarely tune out a story about themselves. The credibility line admits the speaker set the trap, which earns trust through candor. The preview is practical and has a time limit, two things a captive audience is glad to hear.
9. Fundraising appeal
Attention. “‘I don't have to give it back?’ That's what Dev asked last September, when he was nine and we handed him a cello to take home.”
Credibility. “I'm Helen Marsh. I've taught strings at Riverside Community Music School for sixteen years, and I've run its instrument library for the last six.”
Thesis. “Tonight we're asking you to help us buy forty more instruments, so the next forty children on our waiting list can take one home.”
Preview. “I'll tell you what an instrument changes for a child like Dev, what forty of them cost, and how the pledge cards on your tables work.”
Why it works. The quotation comes from someone inside the story, so it's one nobody in the room has heard before. The ask arrives as the thesis, inside the first half minute, and donors know from then on why they're listening. The preview ends at the pledge card, which tells the room the speech is heading toward something they can do with their hands.
Introductions for special occasions
Toasts, eulogies and tributes compress the four parts. Credibility becomes your relationship to the person, and the preview becomes a promise to keep it short or a list of the stories to come.
10. Wedding toast
Attention. “When Hana was six, she sold my bicycle to a neighbor for four dollars and a bag of plums. She told me it was an investment.”
Credibility. “I'm Mira, Hana's older sister, and I've been on the receiving end of her investments for thirty-one years.”
Thesis. “So believe me when I say that marrying Daniel is the best deal she has ever made.”
Preview. “I have one story about each of them, and then I'll ask you to raise a glass.”
Why it works. In a toast, credibility is your relationship, delivered in one clause, and the joke in the hook grows out of that relationship. The thesis is the single thing you want everyone to hear about the couple. The preview is a promise of brevity, a welcome sentence at most receptions.
11. Eulogy
Attention. “If you grew up in Cedar Hollow in the last fifty years, there's a good chance my aunt Rita taught you to swim, and a better chance she made you put your face in the water before you were ready.”
Credibility. “I'm her nephew, Paul. She taught me too, in the same pool.”
Thesis. “Rita believed you could teach anyone anything if you were willing to stand in the water with them.”
Preview. “So I want to tell you about three people she stood in the water with: a seven-year-old who wouldn't let go of the ladder, a widower who'd never learned, and me.”
Why it works. The opening speaks to everyone's memories at once. “If you grew up in Cedar Hollow” tells most of the room they belong in the story, and the gentle joke gives people permission to smile. The thesis names one quality instead of a life story from birth, and three stories named up front give the speaker a map to hold on to when emotion hits. The guide to writing a eulogy covers gathering those stories.
12. Retirement tribute
Attention. “In thirty-six years at the Ledger, Joan Holcomb has fixed the spelling of the mayor's name 212 times. For the last 140 of them, it was the same mayor.”
Credibility. “I'm the managing editor, and her red pencil has been finding my mistakes since my first day, when she circled three things in my byline.”
Thesis. “Joan's job was to catch mistakes. What she was best at was catching them without making anyone feel small.”
Preview. “So I want to tell you about the pencil, the stylebook she keeps in her coat pocket, and the night the presses stopped.”
Why it works. A number that is also a joke, and specific to one person. The credibility line is a small story in itself, with the speaker on the losing end, which is where a tribute speaker belongs. The preview names two objects and one mystery, and the audience waits for the mystery.
13. Award acceptance
Attention. “When the chamber called to say we'd won, I was elbow-deep in rye dough and asked them to call back. I thought they were selling insurance.”
Credibility. “Thank you to the Greene County Chamber of Commerce for calling back, and for this.”
Thesis. “This award belongs to the six people at Lindell's Bakery who start work at four every morning.”
Preview. “One sentence about each of them, then back to the dough.”
Why it works. The award has already established credibility, so the second slot goes to thanks, said early because protocol expects it. The thesis turns the honor toward the people who earned it. And a preview of “one sentence about each of them” tells the room this will be short, which an awards-night audience will thank you for.
14. Graduation speech
Attention. “Four years ago, the bus taking two hundred of us to freshman orientation took the wrong exit, and our first activity as a class was an unscheduled tour of the Wenzel cheese factory.”
Credibility. “I'm Theo Galloway. You elected me to speak today, and I can finally confess: I was the one who told the driver it was a shortcut.”
Thesis. “Most of what we learned here, we learned on the detours.”
Preview. “So I want to talk about three of them: the cheese factory, the wrong lecture hall in week one, and the major half of us dropped by spring.”
Why it works. A shared memory works because every graduate was there, and families get to hear the class laugh together. The confession earns goodwill in one line. The thesis turns the anecdote into an idea, and the preview uses that idea as the structure, three detours, which the ending can call back to.
15. Introducing a guest speaker
Attention. “The first time I read Dr. Ifeoma Nwosu's work, I was on a delayed train outside Baltimore, and I missed my stop because I couldn't put it down.”
Credibility. “Dr. Nwosu is an emergency physician who has spent the last ten years studying why patients wait. Three hospital systems in this state now triage patients using methods from her research.”
Thesis. “Tonight she's going to argue that most emergency room waits aren't caused by a shortage of doctors, a claim nearly everyone in this room has an opinion about.”
Preview. “She'll speak for twenty-five minutes and then take your questions until half past eight.”
Why it works. When you introduce someone else, every part points at them. The hook is a personal moment with their work, the credibility is theirs rather than yours, and the thesis tells the audience why this speaker on this topic matters to this room, without giving the talk away. The preview is logistics. By long convention, a speech of introduction ends with the speaker's name.
Two famous introductions, annotated
Both are public domain as speeches by US presidents in office. Wilson's text is from the National Archives, Eisenhower's from the American Presidency Project at UC Santa Barbara.
“I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because there are serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made immediately, which it was neither right nor constitutionally permissible that I should assume the responsibility of making.”
This is the first sentence of the address that led to the declaration of war against Germany, and it does an introduction's work in one breath. It names the moment, an extraordinary session. It signals the weight of what follows by correcting itself upward: “serious, very serious.” And it builds goodwill with the people whose votes he needs by saying the decision belongs to them, because making it alone would be neither right nor constitutional. There is no hook. On a day like that, the occasion is the hook.
“Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor. This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.”
After a word of thanks to the radio and television networks, two sentences do most of an introduction's work. “Three days from now” names the moment, “half a century in the service of our country” is the credibility statement, and “a message of leave-taking and farewell” states the purpose. The understatement of “a few final thoughts” is part of the effect: the address that follows contains the warning about the “military-industrial complex” that people still quote.
For a third model, read Franklin D. Roosevelt's first fireside chat, annotated in informative speech examples. It names its audience in the first sentence and previews its whole structure in the second.
Mistakes that weaken an introduction
A lot of advice on openings stops at the hook, but many problems come in the three sentences after it. The most common is a thesis that is really a topic:
Thesis
- “Every street has a priority number, and three questions decide it.”
- “The council should let residents keep up to four hens.”
- “Almost every phishing email tries to make you hurry.”
- “Most of the increase comes from one wrong delivery estimate.”
Topic, not thesis
- “My speech is about snow plowing.”
- “Today I'll be talking about chickens.”
- “I want to tell you some things about phishing.”
- “This speech is about our refund numbers.”
- A résumé instead of credibility. Three degrees and a job title, when the room needed one reason to trust you on this topic.
- A preview with six points. If it takes more than one breath, cut a point or group two of them.
- A preview that doesn't match the body. Name the points in the order you'll cover them, in the same words you'll use as signposts later. If you draft in Strokes, ask the Strokes Assistant to review the whole speech and say whether the preview and the signposts still match.
- No turn into the body. After the preview, one short line (“Let's start with priority one.”) tells the room the introduction is over.
- Explaining the assignment. “We had to pick a topic we care about” spends credibility instead of earning it.
- Hiding the ask. In a persuasive speech, an ask that first appears at the end leaves the audience guessing what all the evidence was for.
- Running long. Past about 15 percent of your time, people start to wonder when the speech begins. The length table in how to start a speech converts the share into seconds and words.
To build the whole speech around the introduction, the speech outline template has lines for the hook, the thesis and the preview, then the body and the close.
Frequently asked questions
How do you write a good introduction for a speech?
Write it after the body, so you know what it introduces. Draft the thesis first, then the preview from your main points, then a one- or two-sentence credibility statement, and last the attention getter that leads most directly to the thesis. Read it aloud with a timer and cut anything that delays the thesis.
What is a credibility statement in a speech?
A sentence or two that gives the audience a reason to trust you on this topic: research you did, experience you have, the job you hold, or your relationship to the person or the occasion. It is not a résumé. One relevant fact, such as a morning spent with the city's snow crew supervisor, does more than a list of titles.
How do you introduce yourself in a speech?
Give your name and the one fact about you that matters to this audience, in a single sentence, right after your hook or woven into it. In a self-introduction speech for a class, pick one surprising detail and one thing it taught you, rather than listing your major, hometown and hobbies.
Do I need a preview in every speech?
No. Informative, persuasive and work talks longer than two or three minutes benefit from one, because listeners can't flip back a page to see where they are. Toasts, eulogies, acceptance speeches and other short occasion speeches often replace it with a promise of brevity or a hint of what is coming, such as “one story about each of them.”
