Monmouth College Hewes Library research guides

Choosing a good speech topic

Below are tips and tests that will help you to choose good, researchable topics for your speech assignment.

General tips:

  • Does your professor have a NO list? Are there certain topics that are off-limits? Find out early.
  • Some of the questions / tips / tests below can be applied simply by thinking about them for a moment. Others will require a little database experimentation. Give yourself adequate time in which to explore a topic before writing it in stone.
  • Don't have a speech topic? Aren't sure where to get one? Hewes Library has a number of newspapers and newsmagazines that can tell you about what is in the news. Plus, every media outlet worth its press pass has a website summarizing the day's big stories.

(P)research:

Before we begin making your topic research-friendly, ask yourself the following questions:

  • Who is likely to have written about my topic? Journalists? Scholars? Anyone at all? Think lowering the drinking age: does anyone over 21 care about this issue? And aren't most journalists over 21?
  • Is my topic narrow enough that I can cover it thoroughly within the allotted time?
  • Is my topic timeless (such as democratic participation among young people) or is it related to a certain event in world history (such as voting patterns of Illinois college students in the 2006 gubernatorial race)? Both?
  • Are there any tricks to the language used to describe my topic? Are there variations in spelling? Might journalists and other writers use terms that are different from what I use? Think gay marriage: is that really what we call it? What do the media call it?

Narrowing a broad topic

Most speech topics are far too broad, at least initially. Although it is smart to choose a topic wide enough to give you flexibility with the resources available, casual database searches will bury you with information unless you discover ways to break it down. Here are a few ways to narrow a topic:

Narrowing your topic by time

Choosing a period of time is a quick way to eliminate giant chunks of possibilities.

  • Don't randomly choose a cut-off date. Different topics have different natural watershed dates. Think hurricaine disaster relief: is there more information available post-Katrina?
  • For "timeless" topics, newspaper and magazine articles are always being written, though they may not be on the front page or especially large in the public eye. More articles, however, will be written when that subject hits the news cycle. Look for events that will trigger sudden avalanches of articles on a topic. Think Halloween, as an offensive holiday to certain religious groups: they are always offended, but only in the last week of October do they get their names in the paper.
  • Remember that an article's published date doesn't always match its subject date. Some articles do take the historical approach.

Narrowing your topic by place

Choosing a specific country, state, province or other geographical area is another quick way to narrow your target. You can use a place as an additional keyword in your searches. Some databases (such as LexisNexis) also allow you to search for publications in certain states or regions.

  • But don't choose too small or too remote a place: make sure that Hewes Library has the resources to cover the topic in this place. Think Djibouti (pronounced "jah-booty"): ever heard of this country? Think it makes the nightly news very often?
  • Compare countries / regions / cities / neighborhoods wisely. Think smoking ban: Ireland (population: 4 million) has banned smoking in all pubs. The U.S. (population: 300 million) has not. Can we really compare the United States to Ireland?

Pre-searching your topic in library databases

Even if you have chosen a topic that interests you, that you think is timely and relevant and important to your audience, you still need to turn up some information on it. And that means checking our databases. The two newspaper and general periodicals databases that we will be looking at during your formal Library session are:

  1. LexisNexis, which specializes in retrieving newspaper articles and other items from the mainstream media. Most articles are full-text, but the sheer volume of articles available means that you have to be crafty in order to locate the best articles. Take advantage of all the special features of the "Guided News Search."
  2. Academic Search Premier, which collects newspaper articles, magazine articles, and journal articles. ASP has so many sources that, once again, you need to take advantage of its advanced search features. Many of the sources that you find with this database are available in full-text format.

Good topic checklist

Still not sure if your topic will work or not? Use the following checklist:

  • My topic can be quickly explained to those who are unfamiliar with it.
  • My topic has at least two sides / points of view.
  • Reasonable people can argue about my topic and possibly change their opinions.
  • My topic is narrow enough that it can be completely covered within a few minutes, but broad enough that it is relevant to my audience.
  • The database LexisNexis finds at least 50 newspaper articles written about my topic within the last month.
  • The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal or other major newspaper has printed a front-page article about my topic within the last year.
  • The database Academic Search Premier finds at least 50 magazine/journal articles written about my topic.

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lj 5-4-07