TEHT....: Communication.

Teaching English, How To.... By Raymond Stopper
Essential Ideas: Communication.

Question: How does one teach students to communicate through writing and speaking?

Answer: Most inexperienced writers and speakers, I have found, simply start to write or to speak, and conclude with their major point at the end.

A very simple formula reminds writers and speakers how to organize their ideas in order to communicate clearly:

Tell them what you are going to tell them.
Tell them.
Tell them what you told them.

It's an old formula, borrowed from itinerant preachers in England and America, but perhaps even a cliche in today's business world that wanders and bores aimlessly with PowerPoint. But the formula is followed by professional communicators: TV news and KYW News Radio list the leading headlines before going into depth in developing the details of the stories. Really good reporters do an excellent job of summing up the story in a memorable way.

1. You state your point clearly in the beginning. 2. You give the details in the middle. And 3. you sum it up at the end.

One of my college students put it succinctly, when he said, "It's like hitting your reader or listener over the head three times," in the beginning, in the middle and in the end.