Chapter 11 Choosing, Developing, and Researching a Topic
Floyd: Communication Matters, 3e IM–11 | 1
Chapter 11— Choosing, Developing, and Researching a Topic
At a Glance
Know Why You’re Speaking
Choose an Appropriate Topic
Learning Objectives
After studying this chapter you should be able to:
2. Summarize the four steps for identifying appropriate speech topics.
4. Explain how to evaluate the context of a public speaking situation.
6. Summarize research options at a library.
7. Differentiate research from personal observation, interviews, and questionnaires.
Chapter 11 Choosing, Developing, and Researching a Topic
Lecture Outline
I. Know Why You’re Speaking
A. We speak to inform.
1. When we speak to inform, our goal is to teach listeners something they don’t
already know.
B. We speak to persuade.
1. Persuasion is the process of guiding people to adopt a specific attitude or
enact a particular behavior.
C. We speak to entertain.
1. When we speak to entertain, we seek to amuse our listeners and help them to
have an enjoyable time.
2. To be effective, speakers who entertain must be keenly aware of who their
listeners are and what that audience is likely to find amusing.
D. We speak to introduce.
1. When we introduce other people, our aim is often to inform listeners of the
person’s background and interesting characteristics.
2. We also speak to introduce ourselves.
E. We speak to give honor.
1. When we speak to give honor, we give recognition or commemoration to
people, places, or significant points in history.
2. A eulogy is a speech made to honor the memory of people after their death.
4. A speech of recognition honors someone who is receiving an award.
6. A speech of commemoration honors a significant point in history.
II. Choose an Appropriate Topic
A. Brainstorm to identify potential topics.
1. What topics do you care about?
a. What experiences, hobbies, beliefs, attitudes, values, and skills do you
have?
b. What issues do you care about?
2. What topics are in the news?
3. You can combine the list of topics you care about with the list of topics in the
news to create a master list of potential topics.
B. Identify topics that are right for you.
1. To identify topics that are right for you, ask yourself these questions:
a. What do I already know about this topic?
b. What do I need to learn about this topic?
2. Even if your answers to those questions don’t lead you to a specific topic, they
1. To give an effective speech, you need to select a topic that is right not only for
yourself but also for your listeners.
2. Once you have a potential topic in mind, ask these questions:
D. Identify topics that are right for the occasion.
2. With your potential topic in mind, ask these questions.
a. Why am I speaking?
b. What is the emotional tone of the event?
III. Analyze Your Audience
A. Consider who your listeners are.
1. Good public speakers engage in audience analysis, which means thinking
2. An important part of audience analysis is taking account of demographic
characteristics, which include the following:
a. Age
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iii. Your listeners’ age can influence their facility with computer-mediated
communication.
iv. Listeners’ age can affect which forms of presentation will best grab
c. Culture
i. Culturally sensitive speakers recognize that many cultural minorities
have histories of social, economic, or political oppression and are
resistant to change.
iii. Low-income audiences are often more liberal and more open to new
ways of thinking.
e. Physical and mental capabilities
i. Many audiences include people with differing physical and mental
capabilities.
B. Consider the speaking context.
1. Purpose
a. Consider why your audience will come together to hear you.
i. Will your listeners be required to attend, or will they assemble by
choice?
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ii. Will they anticipate being taught? Persuaded? Entertained?
iii. Is the context formal or informal?
2. Size
a. In general, the larger the group, the more formally structured you should
3. Available time
a. To be effective, speakers must be aware of how long their presentations
4. Distractions
5. Prior knowledge of your topic
a. Consider what your audience already knows about the topic of your
speech.
b. Armed with this information, you can avoid two mistakes:
i. Talking down means telling people what they already know as if they
IV. Know Where to Find Information
A. Websites
1. Having an enormous amount of information at your disposal can be a great
2. Many public speakers use one or more of three kinds of websites when
searching online for supporting material.
Chapter 11 Choosing, Developing, and Researching a Topic
i. On those sites, you can enter words and phrases, and the search engine
will produce a list of websites on which those words and phrases
appear.
ii. In most cases, using a general search engine will identify a wide range
b. A research search engine doesn’t scan the Internet as broadly as general
search engines do but looks only for research that has been published in
books, academic journals, and other periodicals.
B. Books
1. Books include both fictional and nonfictional works, as well as reference
volumes such as dictionaries and encyclopedias.
3. You can also find and read many books online.
1. Periodicals are materials that are published on a regular basis, such as
magazines, newspapers, and scientific journals.
3. Nonprint materials are audiovisual resources such as sound recordings,
movies, and photographs.
4. For making their older resources available to users, most libraries also have
D. Databases
E. Personal observations
1. You can do original research by gathering information yourself.
2. One way is by observing a phenomenon and taking notes about what you see
3. When using personal observations as supporting material, remember that your
4. In addition to collecting your own personal observations, you can also use
2. An interview is a structured conversation in which one person poses
questions to which another person responds.
3. A questionnaire is a written instrument containing questions for people to
answer.
a. Questionnaires have the advantage of allowing you to collect data from a
large number of people efficiently.
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Key Terms
audience analysis
general search engine
Chapter 11 Choosing, Developing, and Researching a Topic
Additional Lecture Ideas
1. Invite one of your college’s librarians or media specialists to class to provide a guest
lecture on research skills and information literacy. Help your guest speaker be better
prepared by explaining the speech project(s) that you have assigned to your students.
2. Plagiarism has become an epidemic across many college campuses. Spend time defining
plagiarism and the different types (for example, the difference between global plagiarism
Floyd: Communication Matters, 3e IM–11 | 10
© 2018 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or distribution in any
manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part.
1. Create a library scavenger hunt for your students that will challenge them to locate books,
2. To emphasize audience analysis, cut out a stack of magazine ads from a sampling of
publications before arriving to class. Divide your class into groups and have them answer
the following questions:
• What specific demographic population is the ad targeting?
• How did your group come to this conclusion?
• What specific demographic population is the ad neglecting?
3. Allow time in class for students to distribute original questionnaires that will help them
get to know their peers better in preparation for speeches. Encourage your students to
4. To help your students practice speeches of recognition, host your own in-class awards
ceremony by pairing students together to give and receive special awards. For instance,
5. The Dark Side of Communication—A Joke Gone South: Offending Your Listeners. Ask
your class to think of a time when they viewed a speaker who made what they deemed to
be an inappropriate joke. How did it come across? Why were they offended? How might
it have originally been intended by the speaker? Is the use of humor in public speaking
ever a safe bet? Why or why not?
Chapter 11 Choosing, Developing, and Researching a Topic
For Review
1. For what reasons might you plan a speech?
2. How can you select a topic that is right for you and your audience?
3. Where can you find supporting information?
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Pop Quiz
Multiple Choice
1. A type of speech that amuses or inspires listeners is a(n)
a. persuasive speech.
b. introductory speech.
c. informative speech.
d. entertainment speech.
2. While brainstorming potential speech topics, you should avoid
a. considering what you care about.
b. identifying unusual ideas.
c. evaluating ideas as you generate them.
d. thinking about topics in the news.
3. In general, the larger the audience, the greater the need for a speaker’s presentation to be
a. short and to the point.
b. formal in structure.
c. positive in tone.
d. politically neutral.
4. The website scholar.google.com is an example of a
a. general search engine.
b. research search engine.
c. library database.
d. microfilm.
5. A form of research that involves collecting data by asking people directly about their
experiences is
a. personal observation.
b. a research database search.
c. a web search.
d. a survey.
Fill in the Blanks
6. When we speak to _____, our goal is to teach listeners something they don’t already know.
7. The process of thinking carefully about the characteristics of one’s listeners is called _____.
8. A library’s _____ is an electronic storehouse of specific information that people can search.
9. Audiences in _____ states tend to be politically conservative.
10. A _____ is a written instrument containing questions for people to answer.
Floyd: Communication Matters, 3e IM–11 | 13
© 2018 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or distribution in any
manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part.