👌 Speech Topic Generator: 4 Benefits
💬 How to Choose a Speech Topic
1. Define Your Goals
What’s the occasion, and which purposes do you pursue? Depending on whether it is a solemn, professional, or informal event, your outline will vary in the level of its seriousness. Besides, the amount of personal experience in your speech also depends on the occasion: the more formal it is, the less you can mention yourself.
2. Evaluate Your Audience
There are 4 things to avoid while selecting a speech topic:
- Making it too controversial for the audience;
- Making it too simple for the audience;
- Making it too complicated for the audience;
- Making it unmatching the audience’s mood.
As you can see, you’ll have to do some research about the knowledge of your future listeners, their backgrounds, needs, and interests.
3. Think of What You Can Offer
Are you passionate about the shortlisted topics? In the case of any doubts, cross them out without thinking. Second, do you have enough sources at hand to prepare the speech? If yes, do you have enough knowledge of it to sound interesting, motivational, or informative? Find the balance between something you know about and your audience’s interests.
The ideas mentioned above define both the topic and the genre of your presentation. Let us start with the genre.
🆚 Informative vs. Persuasive Speeches
An informative speech implies that the speaker is an expert who aims to transfer their knowledge to the listeners. In a persuasive speech, the lector aims to persuade their audience in something.
In more general terms, informative speech topics should be devoid of conflicting ideas and engaging per se. On the contrary, the interest in persuasive speech topics stems from their controversial nature (and formulation). Below you can find more details.
Informative Speech Topics
The topics of this genre fall into 4 categories.
Ideas
This group of topics dwells upon what people believe (though the concepts should not necessarily be true).
For example: How did the people in Ancient Greece imagine their gods? Or, what is the current opinion of science about genetically-caused homosexuality?
Events
An event is anything that happens, and informative speech topics about them describe the past in chronological order.
For example: Which events preceded the Cold War?
Methods
This group describes how something functions.
For example: How do the presidential elections take place in the United States?
Places, people, animals, etc.
This group requires you to make a comprehensive and narrowly-specialized account of the subject.
For example: How do coral reefs affect the ecology, or what was the role of President Nixon in the Vietnam war?
Persuasive Speech Topics
Topics in the persuasive genre are much broader than those of the informative one. Plainly speaking, whenever you think of a subject as a cause for a debate, it fits into a persuasive speech.
Consider the diversity of the following examples:
- Can a war improve the life of people?
- Which philosophical doctrine is more viable: transcendentalism or existentialism?
- Does early child development define their future career?
Once you know your purposes and genre (informative or persuasive), you can easily select the most suitable topic format.
💡 Informative Speech Prompts
As far as you are visiting an educational website, our sample speech prompts will refer to studies. Consider the following examples:
- The difference between public and private education.
The principal difference consists in the sources of funding and administration procedures. But there are other consequential diverging features: class size, networking opportunities, price, etc. Whenever you compare two phenomena in an informative speech, avoid suggesting which of them is better. Let your audience decide for themselves.
- How to prevent cyberbullying in schools?
Divide the speech into three sections: what can schools, parents, and students do for the purpose? For example, schools could provide anti-cyberbullying education to their staff and students, and parents could teach their kids kindness and respect. Students could speak up and not remain idle.
- E-learning in the era of the pandemic.
Describe the pre-history of E-learning and how it became commonplace with the beginning of the pandemic. You can conclude with the prospects for the future in the sphere of distance education.
- The parental role in their child’s education.
How could parents participate in their child’s school life? Look for any available research data on the effects of such attention.
💭 Persuasive Speech Prompts
A persuasive speech always aims to take a side in a conflict of opinions. By the way, look how we have reformulated the informative topics above into persuasive:
- The benefits of private schools over public.
Start with some ground-breaking statistics. For example, students of private schools have higher scores in most subjects. Then move on to more subtle arguments, like more individual attention to each student’s needs or a more personalized educational system.
- Why should schools raise the students’ awareness of cyberbullying?
Speak about the adverse and long-term effects of this harmful practice. It causes depression, low self-esteem, social anxiety, and even suicide. Substantiate your opinion with statistics or references to the personal accounts of victims.
- What are the dangers of E-learning?
If you have attended at least one E-class, you are well aware of its pitfalls. Low student engagement in the process, multitasking, lack of social interaction, and unavoidable cheating are only some hazards to name.
- Should parents control their child’s homework?
Here you should consider if parents’ attention helps their kids. It is a good idea to add your personal experience. There may be an in-between answer: to which extent should parents help?
📌 Speech Topic Generator FAQ
How to Pick a Speech Topic?
- Think about what you plan to do in your speech: inform or persuade?
- Evaluate if your audience is ready (and knowledgeable enough) to perceive your arguments and information.
- Analyze what you know about the selected topics.
- Choose the one that inspires you the most from the ones left.
What Topics Are Good for a Persuasive Speech?
Any controversial topics would apply to a persuasive speech. For example:
- Can one person make a difference in saving the planet?
- Should we perceive people with autism as normal but different?
- Are gay marriages good for society?
- Could a legislative ban on drugs prevent people from using substances?
What Are Some Informative Speech Topics?
- The state-of-art technologies in genetic engineering.
- How to choose a pet for adoption?
- What were the causes of WWII?
- The most significant US cities and their most famous sights.
- How do price changes affect the demand?
- Describe the differences in foster care compared with the previous century.
After Choosing a Topic, What Is the Next Step of Speech Preparation?
nce you’ve chosen the topic, prepare your thesis statement or central idea of your presentation. This action will help you select the relevant facts and arguments that will form the speech structure. Besides, you still have a chance to change the topic if the central idea does not sound persuasive or informative enough.
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