Selecting an informative presentation topic requires focusing on personal interest, audience relevance, and the potential to educate and elevate the listeners, avoiding trivial or unethical subjects.
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one thing students often ask me is what
should I talk about and I always find
that interesting because then I'll say
what do you want to talk about and
sometimes people are frustrated by the
open-endedness of what they can do so
this is just a brief discussion of maybe
how you can select a topic and
guidelines for doing that so obviously
that's the first thing that you do for
this informative presentation is figure
out what is it that you're going to talk
about and I always suggest the first
thing is well what are you interested in
so you should consider topics that
interest you because if you're
interested in it you can make it
interesting for us and your enthusiasm
and interest will help the speech it
will help you in preparing it it will
help you in delivering it it will help
us in listening to it you will also want
to make sure that you can make the topic
relevant to the audience that you don't
want to be so technical that we are
saying gonna say this is over my heads I
can never understand this and I don't
want to so you don't want to do that so
you'll want to make sure that you can
always consider how is this interesting
or relevant to my audience
then finally you will want to make sure
that you find a topic that both informs
us because we've learned something new
but also that elevates us and what I
mean by that is that you do something
that creates an higher level of learning
and that just means things like don't
teach us you know how to shoplift
without getting caught don't teach us
how to cheat on an assignment or how to
take an online class where you don't
really have to take an online class that
doesn't elevate us right that that
provides us a cheat sheet and cheat
sheets are not elevating their shortcuts
so you'll want to provide information
that in fact after we hear it we say oh
I never knew that before
and that can be interesting like I never
knew that that was a cool step in making
pasta I think I could try to make my own
homemade pasta so you're elevating us
and almost encouraging us to consider
that this topic is something that is
interesting and worthy of our time so
you should never dishonor your
opportunities to speak in public or to
an audience by selecting things that are
trivial or problematic maybe unethical
or that's not really worthy of our
attention so how to tie your shoe is not
something that really elevates us
because most of us have learned that or
we don't wear shoes that I so what's
worthy of our attention and make sure
that you choose topics that in fact will
create that more knowledge goal for us
so what do I do how do I find a topic
well you can brainstorm you can
brainstorm your interests or ideas with
friends or with family you can just say
I've got to give this speech and
informative speech what are some ideas
and people can help you and ideally
you're always focusing on generating
ideas not censoring ideas because that's
what brainstorming does it helps you
create a big list of options and then
after you've got a list then you can
start to narrow and then you censor or
discard options you can also cluster the
topics into categories in what an
informative speaking assignment is I
talked about did
categories of informative speaking right
objects people places events processes
concepts so you can cluster eight
according to those categories and then
brainstorm those ideas and you can say
oh yeah I really am interested in doing
this speech on this person because I've
always been interested in as her as a
historical figure for example so those
categories can help you narrow and
therefore brainstorm some ideas um you
can google it crazy as it sounds you can
so let me just share this part of my
screen with you is to show you how I
googled it and I just typed in Oh what's
an interesting topic and here comes
random topics to talk about and then
just goes on a hiking oh yeah I did do that
that
interesting hike at the table rock this
summer I'm holidays I was always
interested in how we came to know about
Valentine's Day for example and so
there's just a hundred and one topics to
talk about you can use those and really
what Google has done for you is generate
that brainstorming that I've suggested
that you've done so that's an easy way
to come up with a list of topics and
then you can start to sort through
things that sound most interesting to
you okay so googling is a good idea
there are also many websites actually
that have lists of informative speech
topics you'll see here this is here's a
list of informative speech topics that's
what that's called it my speech class
and it lists by categories again and
then when you click on each of the
categories let's just look at psychology
then there are ten psychology
informative speech topics the meaning of
dreams for example and that works fine
for helping you generate ideas I would
like to return to this idea of using
these sites and there are lots of these
sites right that you can just go to and
find topics but I would like to offer
you a caution about those sites and
those sites can be traps as well so only
use them as brainstorming right
generative come up with ideas and then
I've got my idea and then now I'm going
to find out how to research it and move
on don't use those resources or those
topics to write your speech for you
right or to come up with how am I going
to organize the ideas just as a way to
generate your topic we know about those
sites those sites can be traps they can
be dangerous they can be shortcuts for
you that will not
of eight you or us and that will be
problems because you might overly rely
on them for your ideas rather than
relying on your own work so settle on a
topic as soon as possible
narrow it by we talk about how to narrow
it in the next lecture and make sure
that you run the topic by your
instructor what do you think will this
work and then you might be able to find
ways to help narrow that topic through
your instructor
make sure that you focus on things that
interest you that reflects your own work
that reflects issues of academic integrity
integrity
please don't take shortcuts because that
harms everybody and it does not elevate
good luck and I hope that you have fun
because this can be a really fun assignment
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