The way to secure in the delivered speech this delight of orderly arrangement is by making an outline or brief. Most pupils hate to make outlines. The reason for this repugnance is easily understood. A teacher directs a pupil to make an outline before he writes a composition or delivers a speech. The pupil spends hours on the list of entries, then submits his finished theme or address. He feels that the outline is disregarded entirely. Sometimes he is not even required to hand it to the instructor. He considers the time he has spent upon the outline as wasted. It is almost impossible to make him feel that his finished product is all the better because of this effort spent upon the preliminary skeleton, so that in reality his outline is not disregarded at all, but is judged and marked as embodied in the finished article. Most students carry this mistaken feeling about outlines to such an extent that when required to hand in both an outline and a finished composition they will write in haphazard fashion the composition first, and then from it try to prepare the outline, instead of doing as they are told, and making the outline first. It is easier—though not as educating or productive of good results—to string words together than it is to do what outline-making demands—to think.

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