How to Select Your Topic When Giving a Speech
Posted in Communication
At some time, the path to personal success is going to have a stop to give a speech. It could be giving a project update at a staff meeting, selling your product to investors, or speaking to the board of directors. In some cases, you would be given a specific topic. However, there are many cases where you will be given a general type of speech, with the choice of specific topic left up to you.
Once you have identified what type of speech you will be making, follow these guidelines in choosing a specific topic:
- Choose a topic you know well. You will feel much more relaxed and confident talking about something you know about instead of selecting a topic that you know nothing about.
- Choose a topic that interests you. You may know much about many topics, but they may not interest you. Avoid these topics. It is more difficult getting your audience interested in a subject that doesn’t interest you.
- Choose a topic that you can make beneficial to your audience. Your audience doesn’t have to be interested in your topic before you speak but they must be by the time you finish. Analyze your potential audience so you have some understanding of their needs and interests.
- Choose a topic that suits the requirements of the assignment. Are you there to teach the audience? Are you introducing a new product? Is your talk supposed to entertain? Determine the type of speech, the time constraints, and other requirements. Then, choose your topic accordingly.
You may also want to conduct a self-inventory to help you come up with possible topics. Ask yourself the following:
- What are my intellectual and educational interests?
- What do I like to read?
- What interesting things have I learned from television?
- What particular courses, or topics covered in courses, have specifically interested me?
- What are my career goals? What do I hope to do in my life?
- What are my favourite leisure activities and interests? What things do I do for fun that others might like to learn more about?
- What personal and social concerns are significant to me?
- What am I passionate about?
- What is going on in the world that is unfair, unjust, or in need of improvement?
Narrowing Down the Topic
Once you have chosen your general topic, you are ready to narrow it down on the basis of your listener’s interests and needs. Here are the steps to follow in narrowing down a topic:
- Choose potential speech topics (from self-inventory).
- Consider situational factors.
- Familiarity: Will my listeners be familiar with any information that will help me select a topic?
- Current events: Can I select a topic to emphasize current events that may be of significant interest to my audience?
- Audience apathy: Can I encourage my audience to be less apathetic toward vents that are totally relevant to me?
- Time limits: Do I have enough time to discuss the topic sufficiently?
- Consider audience factors.
- Previous knowledge: What do my listeners already know?
- Common experiences: What common experiences have my listeners encountered?
- Common interests: Where do my interests and my listeners’ meet?
- Relevant diverse factors: How diverse are my listeners?
- Select your tentative topic.
Related Posts:
9 Key Steps for Preparing a Speech
10 Steps for Practicing A Speech
How to Improve Your Public Speaking
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I like the third point of choosing the topic that benefits audiance. I think no matter at that moment if they are not sure that its going to benefit them, but if you are sure then go for it.
The other thing I usually do is to present the situation to some group of people who are not part of the audiance and try to get list of as many topics I can, and also their views on every topics relative importance, and then come to some 3 or 4 final topics and then don’t move from it.