Research is often an effective way to begin your topic selection process. General newsmagazines, newspapers, and Web sites are great sources for subjects because they include articles on current events, science, geography and culture, famous people, and the arts. These resources can provide ideas for topics that are new to most audience members or can offer new perspectives on topic areas that may already be familiar to the audience. This can help you avoid repeating a message that many of your classmates have already heard. For example, you might read about new research suggesting that sleep enhances your memory.2 This focus would provide a new twist on the more general topic of sleep or the overdone topic of sleep cycles.

162

Many libraries keep recent print periodicals and newspapers in easily accessible locations, and you often can find their online versions on the Internet or through online library portals. You also can browse more broadly for topics online, but beware! As we note in Chapter 3, it is not ethical to plagiarize a speech. If these sites contain links to actual speeches, do not copy all or part of a speech (or use it after changing some of the words) and represent it as your own work.

163

The ideas you generate through research serve not only as potential speech topics themselves but also as starting points for other topic selection strategies, including brainstorming, word association, and mind mapping.