Question

The beginning or introduction of a speech prepares listeners for what is to come. The conclusion ties up the speech and alerts listeners that the speech is going to end. A powerful presenter gets the attention of the audience at the beginning of a speech, keeps the audience's attention, and ends the speech with a bang.  

Evaluate the following introduction in light of those requirements. Be specific and justify your evaluation.

“Imagine yourself walking through a large department store. You admire the new fashions, fiddle with the cameras, gawk at the jewelry, and check out the stereo equipment. Now imagine you can have any of those items for free. All you have to do is steal them.

The temptation is great . . . so great that shoplifting has become one of the most frequent and expensive crimes in the United States. According to Time magazine, there are 150 million incidents of shoplifting in the U.S. each year, and the total value of goods stolen by shoplifters amounts to about $10 billion annually.

And who pays for this? We all do. The value of stolen merchandise, the increased cost of store security, the time consumed in legal proceedings . . . all are passed on to us in higher prices and higher taxes. The Retail Merchants Association estimates that honest shoppers pay as much as 10 percent more to offset the cost of shoplifting.

Although shoplifting is sometimes called an invisible crime, I have learned to see it in my job as a salesperson at Sears. By doing library research and by talking with security personnel at Sears, I have come to realize how widespread and how complex a problem shoplifting is. Today I would like to discuss with you the kinds of shoplifters and the security procedures used to fight them.”

Answer 1

The start is of the speech is good. One may imgaine going through the beautiful malls and doing window shopping. One is able to picturalize the mall and the objects kept. But the idea of stealing the sounds very funny, it brings up the idea of some kind of game or something. Because stealing is not a good act and is against the moral, everybody is taught from their schools, from parents, society etc. Coming it down to speech and and the conclusion, it is targetting on the stealers. The audience in the front is not stealer.

Stealing is provoking them, it is giving positive sense. They apeaker should have told in the beggining what if a person comes and steals it and then we need to pay for it. I guess this would have been a good start.