Chapter 4: CHOOSING TOPICS

• APPROACHES TO TOPIC SELECTION
• QUESTIONS TO ASK OF YOUR TOPIC CHOICES
• DETERMINING THE GENERAL PURPOSE
• ACTIVITY: potential Informative topic
• STATING THE SPECIFIC PURPOSE
• 5 TIPS FOR FORMULATING SPECIFIC PURPOSE. STATEMENT.
• QUESTIONS TO ASK SELF ABOUT SPECIFIC PURPOSE
• ACTIVITY: developing Specific Purpose
• PHRASING THE CENTRAL IDEA
• ACTIVITY: writing Central Idea

TEXT REVIEW

CHOOSING TOPICS is usually determined by

* The occasion, the audience, the speaker's qualifications
* Choose a topic you and listeners can find worthwhile, important, and interesting

You should choose topics according to:

1--Subjects you already know a lot about

* exploit your own strengths; if you are interested, you'll give interesting speeches; the object speeches showed this

2--Subjects you want to learn more about

* let the speech preparation be a learning experience for you and the audience
* your interests and enthusiasm will be contagious

Approaches to topic selection

Method one: list and inventory

* list your experiences, interests, hobbies, beliefs etc.
* list anything and everything that comes to mind

Method two: brainstorming

one idea: nine columns: people, places, events, processes, things
concepts, natural phenomenon, problems, plans and policies

another idea: who, what, where, why, how
* Fill the columns with as much as you can
* Mull over the list; incubate ideas and associations;
        What's interesting? What's worthy of more development:

sub plan: choose several and free associate for each
* Make combinations: pairs from lists; make unexpected juxtapositions
* Be flexible; allow yourself to think in different ways
* Take the ordinary into the extraordinary

QUESTIONS TO ASK OF YOUR TOPIC CHOICES

1--Appropriateness: is it geared to the audience? Appropriate to this class?
2--is it worth listening to as serious, thoughtful examination of ideas?
3--will it be interesting to the audience?
4--does it have widespread human appeal?
5--does it fit audience's needs and curiosities?

DETERMINING THE GENERAL PURPOSE

--To Entertain
We will not be doing any speeches whose general purpose is to entertain, but humor can be used in your informative and persuasive speech.

* humor can ease tensions of audience
* humor can disarm their negativity

1--To inform: conveying information

* Analogous to teaching
* Message must be clear, accurate, interesting

2--To persuade

* Change of belief: asking divergent audience to accept your position
* Convincing: making the audience believe as you do
* Persuade them that this is correct
* Stimulating to action: asking audience to do something specific

ACTIVITY: potential Informative topic

• Take 5 minutes to generate ideas as discussed
• The general purpose is to inform
• Narrow your list to two to use for now

STATING THE SPECIFIC PURPOSE

• Focus on one aspect of your topic
• Phrase as a single split infinitive
• Specific purpose indicates precisely what you hope to accomplish in the speech
• Thought must be given to who audience is

5 TIPS FOR FORMULATING SPECIFIC PURPOSE STATEMENT

specific purpose statement should:

1--be phrased as a full infinitive phrase, not fragment

* Macintosh versus IBM
correct: To explain why the macintosh computer is a better choice than an IBM for entry level users.

2--express purpose as statement, not question

* What's wrong with throwing away plastic?
correct: To inform the audience on why plastics in landfills are dangerous

3--avoid figurative language

* clear cutting is a totally bogus thing
correct: To inform the audience of the harmful effects of clear cutting on watersheds.

4--be limited to one distinct idea

* To inform my audience about taxes, social security and health care
costs
correct: To inform my audience on guaranteed health coverage for all Americans.

5--can't be vague or general

* To tell may audience about sports
correct: To inform my audience about training for college football.

QUESTIONS TO ASK SELF ABOUT SPECIFIC PURPOSE

Does it meet the assignment?

* Can I do it in the time allotted? (a 5-7 minute speech is about 600-1000 words)
* 5-7 minutes is not enough time to develop complex topic

Is it interesting to you?

Is it relevant to my audience?

* must interest audience
* needn't relate directly, there is wide range of interests in this audience

Is the purpose trivial?

* steer clear of the superficial

specific purpose: To inform my audience on how to cook chicken

* is it too technical? An overly technical speech will be hard to attend to.

ACTIVITY: developing Specific Purpose

Preliminaries

* Pair up
* Share your two topics from previous activity
* Discuss virtues of the topics and the potential problems
* Discuss audience interest for the topics
* Each person will settle on one topic

Developing specific purpose

* Write specific purpose for your topic
* Share specific purpose with your partner
* Have partner critique your phrasing

PHRASING THE CENTRAL IDEA

The central idea is different from the specific purpose

specific purpose: what you hope to accomplish
central idea: concise statement of what you expect to say to achieve your specific purpose
it is the thesis statement or major thought

* The residual message: what you want the audience to retain over time
* It is the encapsulation of the main points

• Central idea is usually developed after thought and research and after main points have been written
• Should be expressed as a full sentence
• Should not be phrased as a question
• Should not use figurative language
• Should not be vague or general

Macintosh example

GENERAL PURPOSE : To inform

SPECIFIC PURPOSE : To inform why the macintosh computer is a good choice for entry level users.

CENTRAL IDEA : The Macintosh, is designed to make computing easy, productive and fun for people new to computing.

ACTIVITY: writing Central Idea

• Write central idea for your topic
• Share with your partner
• Have partner critique along discussed guidelines
• Discuss how many Main Points the topic will have
• Discuss which organizational method would work best