Select and Narrow Topic

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Considering your audience helps you in selecting a topic for your speech, the next step of the Speechmaking Wheel. While sometimes your topic will be chosen for you or determined by the situation, in many cases you will have some freedom to choose your topic. As your book's authors contend, "the success of your speech may rest on this decision" (86). As you work through these interactive exercises, you will create a journal that will help you create an effective speech.

This activity will help you generate topics that will be of interest to your audience and set you on the path towards an effective speech. There are three stages:

Preliminary Considerations
Strategies for Selecting a Topic
Narrowing the Topic

This activity contains 2 questions.

Preliminary Considerations

First, review your notes from the unit on considering your audience. If you filled out the form on that page, you should be able to find these notes with your email software.

Then consider the occasion of the speech and consider your own interests and experiences by answering these questions and adding to your speechmaking notebook.

Occasion

Briefly describe the occasion of the speech?
How long of a speech does the audience expect?
Will humor be appropriate for the occasion? If so, what kind of humor?
Speaker
List several of your hobbies.
Where you have traveled?
What social issues concern you?

To create paragraphs in your essay response, type <p> at the beginning of the paragraph, and </p> at the end.

Strategies for Selecting a Topic

First, visit the websites mentioned in the Activities and Links unit for this chapter. Browse the web directories as described in your book on page 106.

Having used the various strategies for selecting a topic, brainstorm ten possible topics in the spaces below.

At a later time, review the list of ten topics and narrow it to three and finally to the one topic you wish to present. Then, follow the steps below to narrow the general topic you have chosen.

To create paragraphs in your essay response, type <p> at the beginning of the paragraph, and </p> at the end.

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