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6

SELECTING YOUR TOPIC

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“Use your topic to focus the message.”

Early in the semester, Sara received the first major assignment for her public speaking class: “Prepare a speech on a topic of interest to you and your audience.” Feeling panicked, Sara thought, “How on earth am I supposed to pick a topic?” While numerous possibilities floated through her mind, she wondered how she could make the best choice. The course had barely started, and already she felt overwhelmed.

But when Sara thought more about her situation, she realized that in a sense, she actually chose topics many times every day. When she wanted to start a conversation with a friend, a family member, or the student standing behind her in a long line at the bookstore, she needed to figure out what to talk about. In these situations, she tried to select subjects that interested both her and the other person. Usually these topics led to satisfying conversations.

With this in mind, Sara considered several topics for her speech. She knew what topics interested her, and most of them centered on emergency management—the process of preparing for and coping with disasters. The previous term, she’d interned for a state emergency management agency specializing in natural disasters. Her first idea was a speech about the community hazard-vulnerability analysis she had helped create, but this topic seemed technical and complex. Because Sara was planning on a career in emergency management, she considered speaking about potential jobs in this field (first responders, social service managers). But her classmates had diverse majors and career plans, and so they wouldn’t necessarily be interested in this topic.

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Sara changed gears and tried to think of related topics that would interest both her and her audience. Because her school was located in a region that recently sustained major flooding, she thought her classmates might wonder how they could best prepare for and deal with a future flood. Sara decided this topic would be perfect: she knew it well, and it would be relevant and helpful to her audience.

Sara’s experience shows that even if you are initially unsure about what sort of topic to choose for your speech, you can find something interesting if you put your mind to it. In this chapter, we present a process for selecting and refining your topic—including developing a list of possibilities, choosing the most promising one from the list, and narrowing that topic so that it meets your speech’s objectives and can be covered in the allotted time.

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