Whenever you’re teaching someone something, you’re speaking to inform.

Just like in a teaching scenario, it’s important to consider what your audience already knows about the topic to avoid boring or overwhelming them. Most importantly, you’ll be able to connect new information to pre-existing knowledge in order to help your audience learn and retain the new material.

Informative speeches usually fall into one of five categories: speeches about objects, people, events, concepts, or processes. Depending on the category, there are various considerations about how you shape and deliver the speech. The most important thing to remember is that the information speech is a speech to inform your audience, not to demonstrate your own knowledge. Whether the speech is about a process, an event, a person, or even yourself, the question you need to ask is, how can this information benefit my audience?