Topics and Relevance
Purpose and Thesis
Part of learning a new skill is recognizing accomplishments. You’ve successfully delivered your first speech in this course. That’s an accomplishment. Over the next few weeks we’re going to get much, much deeper into every aspect of informative public speaking. Your next speech will be far more significant, requiring you to be in charge of every aspect, from selecting your topic to research and organization, all the way through to the final delivery.
Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let’s remember that this is a process with a number of steps. That first step is figuring out what we are going to be talking about. That means thinking about the word relevance. Specifically we’re going to take a look at how speeches are relevant to ourselves, to our audience, and to our occasion.
Prepare Yourself...
What are the most important considerations to make when selecting a topic?
Why is relevance to yourself so important in deciding on what to say?
How do time and space affect what you say and do in your speech?
What are the three general purposes you can choose?
Create a thesis statement for a speech about dogs. How would you judge the quality of your statement?