Topics for Informative Presentations

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When it comes to choosing a topic for an informative speech, there are countless options. You can speak, for example, about something very concrete, such as a person, a place, a thing, a process, or an event. In many cases, your topic will fit into more than one category: for example, a speech on hip-hop music might include descriptions of the genre (thing) as well as of particular bands (people) and performances (events). You might also talk about the way the music developed over time (process). In the sections that follow, we’ll take a look at eight categories for informative speech topics identified by the communication researchers Ron Allen and Ray McKerrow (1985).