How to research one’s speech topic properly with structure

Start with Google / Google Scholar

Google is a great place to just start with an idea. If you have an idea just type it into google and see what develops from the search engine. This is an easy way to just see where your idea can go in terms of persuading your audience to partake in a particular action. It will mainly show what available research there is online and where you may be able to find hard copy sources such as in university libraries, books or magazines. How does a person know what to search? Make a list of everything that you have done in your life.  Start off in elementary school and list all the teams or clubs you were involved with, then continue this with high school and university.  Once you have listed everything you have ever done – this includes collecting stamps, working out, eating habits – then start going through the list and crossing out what you have stopped doing and what you are still doing to this day.  After you have narrowed down that large list, go through and just type the words into Google and see what appears!

What’s your passion?

Develop a tentative focus, look for articles that are readily available such as magazines, textbooks, internet sites your visit frequently or what you notice in everyday society. Then select a certain perspective on the topic. For a speech to be persuasive, it will depend on whether you are convincing your audience to start something or stop something and try something else. Depending on what your action specifically is, you may have to structure your ethos, logos, pathos arguments to suit the topic.  Make sure that you are  sensitive of your audience when choosing a topic to research otherwise if you select a topic such as “Why you should stop using apple products” and you have 90 percent of the class that uses apple products, you’re persuasive speech just became extremely difficult.  

What have you done or stopped?

How do we make this speech personal and build our credibility? Try selecting something that you have done, just recently started or stopped doing.  For instance, if you just learned something you will definitely be able to use that to build your ethos off of, but if you have been carrying out some specific action for quite some time, you will then be able to build your speech off of your entire experience up to this point.  It may be a good idea to start doing something at the beginning of term and do that as your second or third speech because that way you will have been carrying out that action for over a month.  

Credibility is key (Ethos)

An audience is more likely to listen to a speaker that they have confidence in. Building credibility with an audience is largely dependant on the speaker’s ethos appeal. Ethos can be measured through qualities such as trustworthiness, similarity, authority and expertise. Trustworthiness can be gained from an audience by a speaker that comes across as honest, ethical, generous and benevolent. An audience is open more open to persuasion when the speaker shares similarities with the audience members. If you do not share similarities with the audience, then try adapting your language, mannerisms, clothing, visuals and style to better suit the audience.  The expertise and in-depth knowledge that you use in your speech will prove to the audience that by doing your action it should benefit them in the same way as it has benefited you if not more!

How can I support my Topic? (Logos)

The majority of the research that you will be doing will be for the logos appeal. The research of your argument could be classified sometimes as the backbone to your message. To persuade your audience to do your action, you need to have the required research in the message that supports your other modes of appeal and does not take away from them.  This will help increase not only your credibility and appeal to the audience, but also it will prove to the audience that you have put in the time to look at the topic from a professional standpoint.  By taking this professional approach and researching the topic, you are building upon the credibility. You must be careful though, if you do not have well-known sources or sources that the audience has never heard of, you may lose your credibility.  Having well known sources that the audience can review after the speech will create a branch of trust between you and the audience proving that you have “done the research” and that you are not plagiarizing or wasting their time with a topic that isn’t relevant and not useful. As the speaker you also need to trust in your research. Know your facts that you are using and write them on your notecard.  Write extras on your note card too if you are skeptical about some of the questions that may be asked.  If you don’t know your research, the audience will not trust in the research thus destroying any common ground that you have built with your audience for your speech.

 
Create the common ground (Pathos)

To construct your pathos portion of your research you need to focus on the emotions of the audience. This can be the most difficult part of your speech when you have never interacted with the audience.  This can also be the easiest part of your speech because if you know that you are preaching to a group of people on a sunny day about going out and getting exercise, you can use that to your advantage.  The best way to convey your speech is to be passionate about it. If you are excited about the speech, use that excitement and prove to the audience that you are excited to be there! Get the audience emotionally involved by drawing them in with a story or showing to them that you are completely invested in the topic.  Sometimes you have to be extremely personal and go into details that you are uncomfortable with.  For instance, if you are convincing the group that they need to eat less junk food and eat vegetables and fruits more often, you may have to be honest with them and tell them you stopped because diabetes runs in your family and you don’t want that to happen to them too.  The pathos part of your argument should be essentially intertwined with your ethos part.  By showing the audience your personal investment in the topic, you will be able to get a connection with them and prove that they can trust you.  

What is a good source?

When trying to research a topic, use a proper source.  Do not rely on wikiHow for your research, try using sources that end in .org or .edu because these are educational institutes and organizations that focus on these topics.  It is important to note though, that sometimes these sources may not even be reliable.  The best way to know if your source is legitimate, is to take this information you have gathered from one source and try and find two or three other sources that say the same thing.  Also, when you are conducting research, try and focus on important dates and years that are memorable.  Name people who are authorities in the topic, provide additional sources for audience to go and see for themselves, use history books or wikipedias to your  advantage. Make sure that you provide the necessary background information that may be required for your audience to understand why you selected this topic and why it should be important to them.

Usask library page

The Usask library website is a great resource for finding reliable, published information. The main Usask library page can be accessed at www.library.usask.ca. At the centre of the page, there is a green box that have four tabs: USearch, Catalogue, Articles and E-Journals,and Research guides.

• USearch allows you to search all of the available materials including; printed books, journals and articles, images, etc. You can filter these types of materials, as well as limit results to a certain year of publication, and search for multiple materials simultaneously.

• Catalogue allows you to search for materials by word, author, subject, IBSN, and call numbers. To the bottom and to the right, “advanced search” allows you to find materials that are located at different libraries around the campus.

• Articles and E-Journals can be used to search a database for articles that are related to certain subjects. If you know the database name, you can type in search in the upper box. If you would like to search for an E-Journal title or know the material be the ISSN, you can search for that specifically too.

• Research Guides allow you to search for information related to a certain discipline. For example, if I want to research a topic for a speech related to Aboriginal people in canada, I will click the top box so it will and click again on “Native Studies”. This allows you to search for books theses, articles, and websites all related to the subject. The bottom tab allows you to choose a subject not limited to a certain discipline. This section allows you to find information on copyright laws, citation format, and newspapers from around the world.

Resources / Ideas for thought

The following links are for a few videos that may help when giving a speech and preparing for a speech.
This first link is about public speaking in general and how a person needs to communicate no matter what job they have.  Specifically from the video, engineers and scientists tend to use larger words when speaking and this video takes a bit of an in-depth analysis to this.

Melissa Marshall: Talk nerdy to me
This link gives a large number of ideas to select from for topics.  It provides general words that would be able to be narrowed down by the person who is giving the speech.  

How to prepare a speech
This video is a short explanation on giving a great speech.  It covers a couple aspects of public speaking while focusing on the practice and preparation portion of the speeches.