10. Topic

• The topic is the subject of a speech
• Two broad categories of potential topics for your classroom speeches:

  1. Subjects you know a lot about and
  2. Subjects you want to know more about.
• Topics you know a lot about:

  • Subjects with which they are most familiar
  • Draw on your own knowledge and experience
• Topics you want to know more about:

  • Subject about which you already have some knowledge or expertise but not enough to prepare a speech without doing additional research.
  • For persuasive speeches-, think of subjects about which you hold strong opinions and beliefs
  • A topic that you want to explore for the first time.
• Brainstorming: Method of generating ideas for speech topics by free association of words and ideas

  1. Personal inventory
  2. Clustering
  3. Reference Search
  4. Internet Search
• 1. Personal inventory:

  • Make a quick inventory of your experiences, interests, hobbies, skills, beliefs and so forth
  • This list may come to a general subject area out of which you can fashion a specific topic.
• 2. Clustering:

  • Take a sheet of paper and divide it into nine columns as follows: People, Places, Things, Events, Processes, Concepts, Natural Phenomena, Problems, and Plans and Policies.
  • List in each column the first five or six items that come to mind.
  • Free-associate the words or ideas until you get potential topics.
• 3. Reference Search:

  • Browse through the encyclopedia, a periodical database, or some other reference work until you come across what might be a good speech topic.
• 4. Internet Search:

  • Connect to a subject-based search engine such as Yahoo! Directory (dir.yahoo.com) or the Librarians’ Index to the Internet (www.lii.org).
  • If you click on one of the categories, you will see a group of subcategories, any of which might get you closer to a speech topic