Those three words, found on maps everywhere from highway rest stops and shopping malls to tourist sites and hiking trails, capture your attention instantly, as they’re designed to do. They immediately orient you to where you are and help you spot, with ease, where you’re about to go. Show There is a tool you can use during your presentation that plays a similar role – transitions. They serve as spoken you are here! signs, connecting distinct ideas, topics, or tones, and guiding your audience from one point to another. Transitions can be a word, phrase, question, or statement. They can be subtle or overt, smooth or abrupt, gradual or purposefully shocking – whichever best serves your intention. Without them, audiences can feel as lost as travelers without a map. As an added bonus, they also can help you to round up the stragglers. Used as a way to break the pattern, verbal transitions can reengage audience members whose attention may have wandered. 7 Ways to Use Transitions in Your Talk1. To elaborate
 2. Highlight a key message
3. Link similar ideas
4. Move from one section to another
5. Summarize or highlight relevance
6. Introduce conflict
7. Indicate next steps or set up your call to action
Recapturing AttentionYes, we are sneaking in an eighth way verbal transitions can make for a better presentation. They have the power to snap your audience back to attention. It’s a strategy familiar to experienced radio hosts and podcasters, who use transitions to regain attention from members of their audience whose focus may have drifted. Just imagine listening to the radio when the host says, “But even more than that, the most surprising thing I learned was ….” At that moment, are you really going to switch to a different station? Or are you going to stay tuned to hear the most surprising thing? Since main points are discrete and interconnected ideas, and since every speech contains more than one main point, it is necessary to strategically make connections between one point and another. To link the ideas of your speech, you will need to develop signposts, “words and gestures that allow you to move smoothly from one idea to the next throughout your speech, showing relationships between ideas and emphasizing important points.”[1] There are several ways to incorporate signposts into your speech, and it is important to do so since these small signals keep listeners engaged and informed about where you are in the speech. Transitional statements, internal previews, and summaries are all signposts that can help keep your speech moving along.
Transitional Statements to Show Similarity and Difference To Show Similarity Between Points:
To Show Difference Between Points:
One way to connect points is to include transitional statements. Transitional statements are phrases or sentences that lead from one distinct- but-connected idea to another. They are used to alert audiences to the fact that you are getting ready to discuss something else. When moving from one point to another, your transition may just be a word or short phrase. For instance, you might say “next,” “also,” or “moreover.” You can also enumerate your speech points and signal transitions by starting each point with “First,” “Second,” “Third,” et cetera. The textbox above offers a short list of transitional statements that are helpful when you need to show similarity or difference between the points. You might also incorporate non-verbal transitions, such as brief pauses or a movement across the stage. Pausing to look at your audience, stepping out from behind a podium, or even raising or lowering the rate of your voice can signal to audience members that you are transitioning. Another way to incorporate signposts into your speech is by offering internal previews within your speech. Internal previews, like the name implies, lay out what will occur during your speech. They tell the audience what to expect. Because audience members cannot flip back and forth between pages, internal previews help keep them on track and aware of what to be listening for and what to remember. Internal previews are similar to the preview statements you will learn about in the chapter on introductions and conclusions (Chapter 9), except that they appear within the body of your speech and are more small-scale than the broad preview you should provide at the beginning of your speech. In general, internal previews are longer than transitional statements. If you were giving a problem-solution speech, you might include a variation of this internal preview: “Now that I have described the problems, let’s now discuss some ways that we can solve these issues.” The internal preview offers a natural segue from problems to solutions and makes audience members aware that another point is about to be made. When speeches are longer than a few minutes and include complex ideas and information, speakers often include summaries within the body of their speech. Summaries provide a recap of what has already been said, making it more likely that audiences will remember the points that they hear again. Additionally, summaries can be combined with internal previews to alert audience members that the next point builds on those that they have already heard. “Trout” by Jonathunder. CC-BY-SA. The speaker below has just finished discussing several reasons trout habitats need federal protection, and next he will discuss some ways that audience members can agitate for government action on these issues. His combined internal preview and summary would look something like this: So, in review, trout habitats need federal protection because they bear a large pollution burden, they mostly exist on private property, and they are indicators of other environmental health issues. Next, I will discuss some ways that you can encourage the federal government to protect these habitats. In this example, the speaker first reminds audience members of what he has already addressed and then tells them what he will talk about next. By repeating the main points in summary fashion, the speaker gives audience members another opportunity to consider his main ideas.
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