Informative Speech and outline

An informative speaker aims to teach, to share something interesting with the audience. One of the keys to being an engaging speaker is choosing a topic in which you are authentically interested. When you speak about a topic that you find interesting, you set yourself up for more success in several key areas, for instance, audience relevance and personal credibility. In addition, you will enjoy the entire process more fully and your audience will enjoy listening to you!

A few additional notes:

· Since this is an Informative Speech, avoid advocating for a specific position about the topic. You will have the chance to speak about your position on a specific topic during our Persuasive Speech round.

· Your speech must include the use of credible sources.

· A crucial part of any speech is adapting the content to your audience. Be sure to pick a topic that you feel the audience should know about or would be interested in hearing. Carefully consider what your listeners might want to hear. A topic such as ‘Nutrition for Preschool Aged Children’ probably wouldn’t be too interesting to your target audience, right?

· You may NOT use content from a paper or presentation you previously wrote for another class. This is called self-plagiarism.

Ideas to Get You Thinking

Here are some ideas and questions to get you started thinking about your topic.

Questions to Consider

What do you already know a lot about? What do you know that might be interesting to someone else?

What would you like to learn more about? Take a look at the ‘Things to Explore’ category below. Does something you run across seem interesting? Take this opportunity to research the topic and become familiar with it.

What current events interest you? Do you hear about topics in the news that you find interesting but don’t fully understand? This is an opportunity to dig in and bolster your understanding while also teaching us.

Also related to current events, is something happening in our country, state, country, or world that you think the audience should know about? Look at the local news, what is happening around here? Or, broaden your scope and dig into things happening around the world. There is so much that goes on every day!

Do you have an interesting family background? Maybe a family member is a war veteran or worked with the Civilian Conservation Corps. Provide an informative speech about that person, pulling in research on the historical event or activity.

What are your future plans? What interesting new developments have there been recently in your field of study? Who founded your field of study? For instance, what were the earliest days of nursing like? Are you thinking of going into the Peace Corps? What is the history of the Peace Corps?

Things to Explore

News Magazines and Websites: Time Magazine, Newsweek, National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, CNN, the list can go on and on here. Look beyond the obvious headlines and check out the subheadings of topics like Health, Tech, Money, etc. The websites will drive you toward the headlines, but if you scroll around a little, you will also find the subheadings.

Podcasts like Stuff You Should Know and Science Friday. These are just two; there are many podcasts, of course. See if you can find one that interests you and then scroll through that podcast’s latest episodes.

Google Doodles Check out the different people and dates celebrated through Google Doodles. Google it, you’ll see!

TED Talks TED Talks are a great way to start thinking of topics. There is even a TED Talk blog that discusses interesting TED Talks.

Mad, Sad, Glad

Take out a piece of paper. Make a list of things that make you mad, sad, and glad. Spend some time on this and come up with a good list of several things in each category. This might lead you to some interesting possibilities for speech topics!

Checklist for Informative Speech Topic

1. Is my speech topic interesting to me? Does it pertain to me in some way?

2. Is my topic researchable and supported by credible and peer reviewed research?

3. Am I able to apply this topic to my audience and explain why they should know about it?

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