The relationship between a speech and an essay is quite distinctive despite the two being the main ways to pass information to the intended audience. The mode that is chosen to pass the information will highly depend on the type of the targeted audience.

What is Speech?

A speech is used to convey information if the targeted audience is lively and responsive. They can ask questions to the speaker and get an immediate response.

What is Essay Writing?

An essay is used to convey information if the targeted audience is reading. One that can access the written essay and read it. This falls short of providing immediate feedback.

Therefore, this means that the methodology the writers use to come up with an essay or speech will also vary.  How you make use of both diction and dramatic effect in a speech or an essay will greatly influence the type of response you intend to evoke in your targeted audience.

A speech may not contain many details since the person presenting it before the audience may give much of the explanations during the speech. An essay should be very elaborate and detailed because the readers are not a live audience and there is no room for immediate response in case there is a need for further explanation on some questions that may arise.

However, within the distinctive characteristics, there exists some level of similarity between a speech and an essay.

What is the Relationship Between a Speech and an Essay?

A speech is meant to be delivered by a speaker before an active audience. It is spoken before the audience that can be engaged in the presentation of the speech. At some point, the active audience can ask questions and get direct feedback from the speaker. This helps to enhance understanding and also gives further direction on areas that may not seem clear.

While an essay is a piece of writing meant for the readers who have no direct interaction with the writer. There will be no room to interact or even have the reading audience engaged. If a speech had to be read just like one would read an essay before an active audience, this would make the presentation boring and some of the listeners may end up falling asleep.

Below are the distinctive considerations in the relationship between a speech and an essay.

1. Audience

A writer must always take into account their audience when writing an essay or a speech. If a writer is writing an essay that focuses on a research breakthrough for publication in a research journal, he/she probably won’t need to add a section explaining the technical vocabulary employed in the publication since it is assumed that the readers of the research journal are familiar with it.

But if the same research journal had to be published on other platforms that are not research-related, then the essay writer must assume that their readership is unfamiliar with the issues in the publication and try to explain them thoroughly.

In the case of a speech, taking into account the audience goes so much further. When giving a speech to a group of researchers who are your targeted audience, you won’t need to always keep clarifying the specialized research vocabulary. You will only need to keep your audience engaged.

To keep the audience fully engaged when giving a speech, the tone of voice, speech patterns, and physical demeanour are all aspects that should be considered, and the speechwriter must contemplate how much each of these factors should be used.

2. Tone

A speaker or speechwriter should always think about how to illustrate particular crucial points verbally and how to transition between the ideas intended to be conveyed to the audience in a natural yet clear way that the audience can understand better by deploying a conversational tone.

An excellent speech must retain the audience’s attention for a defined period. Whereas, essay reader can take their time, skim between topics, and review sections that may seem confusing on the first reading.

However, bold fonts, italics, or underlined phrases can be used to emphasize particular points of great importance in an essay. An essay can also be arranged into different subheadings and sections that are meant to help build a free and flowing transition of thoughts.

Each subheading or section can help the reader understand how the information they are consuming has been formatted. This makes an essay have some formal tone of presentation

3. Sourcing

The sources of a given piece of information are frequently utilized in an essay. This is meant to help in supporting the essay writer’s thesis or help in demonstrating a given point to the readers. An essay writer must always offer a citation and a bibliography of the publications they have referenced anytime they utilize a source in their written materials.

To prevent plagiarism, it is crucial to make your sources of reference evident by correctly acknowledging them in an essay. Additionally, the standards of presenting those sources are stringent and must be strictly followed.

External sources of information are also often used in speeches. The difference is that, in a speech, the speaker will keep his audience engaged by finishing the speech with a spoken list of references.

However, a speaker must credit any of the outside sources of the speech or acknowledge its source verbally in a manner that transitions organically within the speech. This enables the audience to know where the source is.

4. Rigidity

Essays are rigid. This means that once they have been written they remain permanent and cannot be modified once it has been printed or written down. For as long as a particular language and writing system are still known, an essay can communicate beyond time and distance.

Alternatively, speeches are typically spoken in the heat of the moment and are utilized for instant encounters before the intended audience. A speech’s content and presentation can be changed when considered necessary. The speaker can amend and adjust the pronouncement on the go. As a result, each speech is distinct in that a speech given for the second or third time might never be identical.

5. Mode of Interaction

An essay writer does not receive immediate feedback from the readers. As a result, they cannot rely on the readers’ input to help clarify specific points to try to clarify a given subject again to make sure that the reader understands everything. Consequently, an essay writer cannot pass over information that is dull or irrelevant to the audience. These are some of the disadvantages of one-way communication as seen in essay writings.

However, a speech is frequently a spontaneous exchange involving two or more persons. Because context and common knowledge are important, it is possible to leave a lot of important content unspoken or inferred based on the audience’s input and response.

6. Punctuation

In an essay, a writer has the liberty to utilize punctuation, headings, layout, lists, colours, and other graphical effects. The writer can also make use of other structures, as well as some types of terminologies such as sophisticated scientific and medical phrases. These can only be employed in written essays. Speeches do not give room to incorporate such structures.

On the other hand, a speaker delivering a speech before an audience uses vocal diversity and other non-verbal ways to communicate. This helps to add meaning to their spoken words while delivering a speech rather than the use of punctuations.

The timing, tone, volume, and timbre can all be used to lend an emotional element to a speech. Furthermore, certain language is used exclusively or primarily in a speech. Slang idioms and tags all fall in this category.

What is the Structure of a Speech and an Essay?

There exist some similarities between the structure of a speech and that of an essay. There is no clear distinction in terms of structure between the two modes of conveying information. They both have a clear format on how information is supposed to be conveyed to the audience.

Structure of an Essay

An essay help writers to convey their in-depth knowledge about a given topic through reading and research. This helps the writer to critically discuss and evaluate ideas. The main purpose of an essay is to develop an argument or analyze a given idea. The essay is always written in paragraphs and has a structure that includes:

• The Title

The title of an essay is a concise summary of the main topic that is discussed in an essay. It helps the reader to instantly identify the subject, helps attract the attention of the reader, and forecasts the tone and substance of the writing to follow.

• The Introduction

The introduction is a crucial part as it sets the stage for the whole essay. The introduction helps identify the topic, the position of the writer, and why the writer considers the position taken to be the best. The introduction will normally transition from more general statements related to the question in discussion to a specific statement of the main idea or argument that is meant to disc in the body.

• The Body

The body of an essay contains pieces of evidence from the writer’s research and supports in detail the reasons for the writer’s point of view taken in the introduction. The body is built through several paragraphs that create a connection to another to help develop a strong argument or discussion of the topic. Generally, a paragraph in an essay is at least four to six sentences long.

• The Conclusion

The conclusion helps to summarise and make final evaluative comments on the ideas presented in the essay.

Structure of a Speech

A speaker delivering a speech before the audience must always structure the speech in a manner that makes it simple for the audience to understand the main topic of discussion. The speech must always be split into three structural sections that include:

• The Introduction

This is the part of the speech whose aim is to introduce yourself to the audience. It is at the introduction of the speech that the speaker gives a snippet of the main subject of discussion. The speaker must be able to grab the attention of the audience by employing language that is engaging and captivating.

• The Main Body

The body of a speech always contains the spoken arguments of the speaker. The main body can always have subsections depending on the number of issues that the speaker may intend to talk about. It contains the arguments that support the speech and the speaker’s point of view.

• The Conclusion

At the end of each speech, there must be a conclusion. This is the point where the speaker sums up everything spoken about and even goes further to close the speech by thanking the audience for lending a listening ear.

Conclusion

The relationship between a speech and an essay can be traced by looking at the differences and the similarities in characteristics that the two methods of conveying information have.  Despite the huge distinctive characteristics between a speech and an essay in terms of presentation, there exists a certain level of similarity when you focus on the structure of the two.

The choice of which methods fits you when you want to pass information to your audience will highly depend on your objective.

An essay will be the best method to convey information if your target audience is a reading audience and you don’t expect to get an immediate response. An essay will also be of importance if you want your information to last more generations to come since written information will always stay permanent.

A speech will be the best choice to convey information if you target to address the information to a live audience and immediate response is required. However, a speech will not last for a long time and cannot be kept on record for future reference.