McGraw-Hill Public Speaking

• Selecting a topic
• Assessing your speaking situation
• Developing and refining your central idea and purpose
• Identifying an audience
• Speaking to an audience
• Home

The topic is the subject of your speech. In social or business settings, the topic is often pre-defined by the situation or by your area of expertise. When you need to select a topic, you may feel at a loss. Try these techniques.

List topics you know about

Topics you know about include your experiences, subjects you've studied, and your hobbies. Seemingly ordinary circumstances can provide interesting material for a speech. If an experience was important enough for you to list, think about what made that event significant for you. Resist the temptation to eliminate topics without listing them.

List topics that interest you

If none of the topics that you know about interest you, choose a topic that you would like to learn more about. Perhaps a recent incident has made you wonder about a topic you know very little about. Your speech offers you an opportunity to investigate.

Brainstorm by starting with general categories

A list of categories can trigger ideas. Begin with the standard categories of people, places, and things. Include people who are close to you, anyone famous or memorable you've met, and anyone you admire. List places you've lived, places you've visited, places you'd like to visit, and historical places that interest you. Identify things around you, special objects from your childhood, objects that annoy you, and things youd like to have. You can add other categories, if you need to.

Cluster ideas

Once youve found a few general topic areas that capture your interest, expand them with sublists. Sublists will help you locate a focus for your topic.

Search databases, indexes, and the internet

You may be in a situation where the general subject area of your speech has been specified, but not the specific topic. If the general subject area is new to you, brainstorming and clustering may not provide you with enough topic ideas. In this case, youll need to refer to external sources to augment your topic list.