Selecting a Topic and Creating Support for an Informative Speech

Remember that an informative speech should fit within one of the five speech types:

1. objects
2. processes
3. concepts
4. events
5. people

Selecting a Topic

Choosing a topic can sometimes be the most difficult step. You want to choose a topic that is of interest to the audience and yourself.  If you think finding a topic is a challenge, you are not alone. There are professional speakers who think this can be one of the hardest parts of a speech!

As you think about topic choices, recall that the purpose in an informative speech is to share information with an audience, not to persuade them to believe something or take some kind of action.

As an example, if you choose to give a speech about affordable housing options, you will want to keep your focus on explaining the options available to your audience rather than offering your opinion on the best options. You do not want to ask your audience to try and persuade their local legislators. You only want to stick to the research you have done about what constitutes affordable housing and nothing more. It is important to select a topic you understand well, one that is of interest to you and can be explained to your audience easily. You do not have to be an expert on your topic, but you should be familiar enough with it that you can talk about it with confidence. You also want to keep your audience in mind. Select a topic your audience may now be familiar with but would would be interested in learning more about.

When determining a topic, keep the following in mind:

• What is your speech’s purpose? In this case, it’s to inform or explain. Focus on topics that lend themselves to that purpose.

• Who is your specific audience? Would they be interested in your topic? What knowledge might they already have about your topic? What might they want to know about your topic?

• What constraints have you been given? For example, are you speaking in person or online? IN real time or asynchronously? How much time will you have to speak? How many sources do you need to cite? Are you required to use visual aids?

Find the right scope

One common error students in public speaking classes often make is selecting a topic that is too large or broad in scope for the time they have been given to deliver their speech. To illustrate, you might be interested in developing a speech that informs your audience about the Black Lives Matter movement. Even though Black Lives Matter is a specific social justice movement, it is still a broad subject with many different facets, any one of which might be a good subject for an informative speech. For example, you could devote the speech to the particular events in 2013 that were the genesis of the movement. Or you might focus your speech on explaining how the #BlackLivesMatter social media hashtag helped spread awareness of the movement. Or, you could talk about how Black Lives Matter started.

As you think about selecting a topic, ask yourself whether you can reasonably hope to inform or educate your audience in the time frame you have for the speech. If you think your topic might be too broad in scope, try and brainstorm aspects of the topic that would be focused and narrow enough to fit the time parameters you have been given.

The following video includes useful tips for identifying potential informative speech topics.

Once you have selected your topic and narrowed it to fit the assignment parameters, you can start developing your speech.

Creating Support for an Informative Speech

You need to consider two main aspects of support when creating an informative speech.  One is how to relate your information to your audience so that you are indeed teaching them something that they find interesting and memorable.  The other is how to verify that you’re providing credible information, which involves incorporating research from valid sources.

General Guidelines for Audience-Centered Support

According to Lucas and Stob on pages 273-281 in The Art of Public Speaking, there are six guidelines to remember when creating support for your informative speech: NEED A FOOTNOTE HERE  Lucas, Stephen E. and Paul Stob (2023). The Art of Public Speaking. McGraw Hill. 

1. Don’t overestimate what the audience knows
2. Relate the subject directly to the audience
3. Don’t be too technical
4. Avoid abstractions
5. Personalize your ideas
6. Be creative

In other words, you need to put yourself into the place of an audience member who may have the least amount of knowledge of your topic.  Make sure not to use terms and concepts that are outside of that person’s realm of knowledge.  If you do need to explain what might be a new concept, make sure to explain it using details and examples that are in everyday human experience.  The concept of humanizing is important.  Don’t simply list facts and figures in an informative speech – include a human aspect, since audiences better remember stories that relate to human experience.

Importance of Research in Support

We live in a world where we are bombarded by information every day. Some of the information is based upon careful research where facts and data are collected from reliable sources. Some of this information is all opinion based without credible sources to support the claims made. It is important to be able to distinguish between the two.

Facts and data are what is called supporting material. You  can obtain supporting materials by doing research. This research is essential for creating a credible, informative speech that your audience will want to give their attention to.

Supporting research:

• clarifies the ideas and content you are sharing

• helps you emphasize key ideas and make your speech more impactful and memorable

• builds your credibility as a speaker, by showing the audience that you are knowledgeable in the area researched

The type of supporting material you use and how you present it will impact the effectiveness of your speech since it reflects on your credibility as a speaker (your ethos). Credibility is very important to build. The audience will not want to listen to a speaker who uses either poor or no sources. They want to trust that the person speaking knows what they are talking about. You can show trustworthiness by using supporting materials. Your speech is going to be effective only if the audience trusts what you say.

Verifying your Support

When creating your speech, you should carefully verify the facts and data in your supporting materials. The supporting material you cite should be:

• Accurate

The materials should be free from factual errors or inaccurate statements. Especially if the claims seem outside of the norm, too good to be true, or controversial in some way, it’s important to cross-check the data with other sources.

• Authoritative

The materials should come from sources that are reliable, knowledgeable, and credible about the subject. What do you know about the author’s credentials? Has the author written multiple publications on the topic (you can do a quick search).  For websites, is the site personal, commercial, governmental, organizational, or educational (.com, .gov, .org, .edu)?  

• Current

In most cases, more recent research is better than older research. Exceptions exist for some types of historical research, but in general for most speech topics try to draw from current research. For websites, check to see that the site uses current, professional design with easy navigation, if there is no date visible. 

• Unbiased

Keep in mind that everything is written from a particular social, cultural, and political perspective. Realize that some publications tend to be slanted towards a certain viewpoint. For example, the CATO Institute is known for being libertarian, while The Nation is known to lean left. These types of sources can be okay to use for certain speech topics, but generally for informative speeches they should be avoided. Especially for informative speeches where your purpose is to teach (and not persuade), you want to draw supporting materials from sources that don’t have a particular agenda or bias behind them.

CRAAP Analysis

One excellent tool to remember what to look for when examining both the suitability and trustworthiness of a source is the CRAAP method, which stands for:

• Currency: the timeliness of the information
• Relevance: the importance of the information for your needs
• Authority: the source of the information
• Accuracy: the reliability, truthfulness, and correctness of the information
• Purpose: the reason the information exists

View the following video, which clearly presents a number of questions to ask to determine whether a source is good one to use.