Planning a Persuasive Speech for a School Assembly
You have 3 minutes (about 350–400 words of spoken Hindi) to persuade your school assembly to start a weekly clean-up of the school ground. Your principal has said speeches must be in Hindi, must include one personal example, and must end with a specific request. You are nervous about speaking and tend to write in English first. Your first draft is 520 words and includes three statistics, four separate requests, and a long story about a cousin in another city.
1. Explain what to cut and why, and what the speech's structure should be.
Read the worked answer
Cut: the cousin story (it is long, about another city, and the audience cannot act on it - replace it with a short personal example from your own school ground); two of the three statistics (spoken numbers are hard to retain; one vivid figure is enough); and three of the four requests (multiple requests dilute action).
Keep: one personal example, one statistic, one request. The principal's three requirements become the skeleton.
Structure (roughly):
- Hook (~40 words) - a concrete image of the ground at lunchtime.
- Problem (~80 words) - what it costs the school, with the single statistic.
- Personal example (~90 words) - what you saw or did yourself.
- Proposal (~80 words) - the weekly clean-up, who does what, how long it takes.
- Request (~40 words) - one clear ask, repeated once.
The judgement: spoken texts need fewer points, more repetition, and a single ask. A 520-word draft is roughly 4 minutes, so cutting is not optional.
2. Write the closing 60–80 words of the speech in Hindi, ending with the specific request.
Read the worked answer
Model closing:
"मैं कोई बड़ा भाषण नहीं दूँगा, बस एक बात कहूँगा। पिछले हफ़्ते मैंने अपने हाथ से मैदान के कोने से आधा बोरा कचरा उठाया - सिर्फ़ दस मिनट लगे। दस मिनट! अगर हर कक्षा के दस बच्चे हर शुक्रवार को दस मिनट दें, तो हमारा मैदान एक महीने में बदल जाएगा। इसलिए मेरा आपसे एक ही निवेदन है: इस शुक्रवार, छुट्टी से पहले, अपनी कक्षा के शिक्षक को 'हाँ' कहिए। बस 'हाँ'। धन्यवाद।"
Why this works: it repeats the one number (दस मिनट) for emphasis, gives a concrete personal action, makes one request with a clear, low-effort action ("कहिए 'हाँ'"), and closes with a short "धन्यवाद". The repetition is a deliberate spoken-language device, not redundancy.