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Speech Communication: Getting Started

The hardest part is getting started—but you can do it! This page will help you select a topic to research for your speech assignment. Always make sure that your topic meets your professor's requirements—check with them if you're not sure.

Google It

This COD Library tutorial will provide you with a framework for identifying a manageable topic, developing a research question, and using Wikipedia and Google to create a research outline. 

Choosing a topic

Selecting a topic can be the most important and most difficult step of your research project. An ideal topic:

  1. Is interesting to you. You'll be spending some time with this topic, so pick something you're curious about. Consider researching a special interest, a hobby, an issue you're passionate about, or a topic you've always wanted to know more about. Short on ideas? Browse the New York Times, Issues and Controversies, or even your favorite social media app to see what people are talking about.
  2. Meets the requirements of your assignment. Are there topics you cannot use? Is there a theme or subject area you should choose from? Does your instructor want to approve your topic first?
  3. Is researchable. Keep source requirements in mind when you select a topic. If your instructor requires you to use books, you may not be able to use a local current event, for example, as your research topic. Before you commit to a topic, try a quick search in Google or a library database to ensure that resources are available.

Material in this section is adapted from the Research Skills Tutorial by the Librarians at Empire State College. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Narrowing your topic

Once you've come up with some topic ideas, do some background research on one or more of those topics to get an overview. This will help you narrow your focus and equip you with necessary vocabulary (names of people, places, and things related to the topic) to continue your research.

Think of 4 or 5 keywords that describe your topic—these will come in handy once you start your research. You can also look up your topic on Wikipedia and check out the Table of Contents, or use the Mind Map in Credo Reference. These resources can help you find additional keywords and subtopics to help you narrow your focus. You may also find Gale eBooks, a collection of subject encyclopedias, helpful for brief, factual information.

You can also look for books in the library's catalog. Search using keywords and look at the book's record.  Are there chapter headings that help you focus your topic? What subject headings are used?

Wikipedia Table of Contents and Credo mind map for "Antarctica"
Table of Contents for the Wikipedia article on Antarctica Credo Mind Map for Antarctica

By using Wikipedia's table of contents and Credo's mind map, you can come up with a whole list of more specific topics (the impact of climate change on Antarctica, the history of human settlement, animal life, explorers like Amundsen and Scott, the South Pole). This is especially useful when you're starting with a very broad topic like "Antarctica"—you probably don't have time to talk about the entire continent!

Let's look at a brief example of how this narrowing process might look on paper:

  • Starting idea: cyberbullying

  • What things would you need to find out in order to write about this topic? What people (high school, middle school, or college students?), places (U.S., Illinois, or a comparison between places?) and related concepts (internet trolls, state and federal laws, school policies, social media platforms, statistics, such as the number of people who experience or see it?) are connected to this idea?

  • Some background reading: Wikipedia, government site, Credo

  • Ideas for narrowing the topic (freeform brainstorm—look at aspects of the topic from above that appeal to you—put into the form of questions): Cyberbullying and child development? Cyberbullying and post-traumatic stress? Is there a connection between those who troll on the internet and those who engage in cyberbullying? What policies have been put in place in Illinois (or my local school district) to combat cyberbullying? What is the relationship, if any, between economic and or ethnic status and cyberbullying?

  • Locate more information sources related to the topic (books, journal articles, government reports, etc.). Read or skim them and begin to formulate a more concrete direction for your research to take. Take notes. As your knowledge of the topic grows, ideas for what ultimate question(s) your paper will attempt to answer should start taking shape.

Material in this section is adapted from the Research Skills Tutorial by the Librarians at Empire State College. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Using a topic to generate questions

Research requires a question for which no ready answer is available. What do you want to know about a topic? Asking a topic as a question (or series of related questions) has several advantages:

  1. Questions require answers.
    A topic is hard to cover completely because it typically encompasses too many related issues, but a question has an answer, even if it is ambiguous or controversial.
    TOPIC QUESTION
    Drugs and crime Could the liberalization of drug laws reduce crime in the U.S.?
  2. Questions give you a way of evaluating answers.
    A clearly stated question helps you decide which information will be useful. A broad topic may tempt you to stash away information that may be helpful, but you're not sure how. A question also makes it easier to know when you have enough information to stop your research.
  3. A clear open-ended question calls for real research and thinking.
    Asking a question with no direct answer makes research and writing more meaningful. Assuming that your research may solve significant problems or expand the knowledge base of a discipline involves you in more meaningful activity of community and scholarship.

Research questions are open-ended and require a variety of accumulated data to develop an answer. ("Could liberalization of drug laws reduce crime in the U.S.?")

Review or report questions are typically answered with what is generally known about a fairly narrow topic. ("What is the rationale for California's "3 strikes" sentencing policy?")

Reference questions are typically answered with single known facts or statistics. ("What percentage of drug-related crime in 1999 was committed by dealers, not users?")

Research Tip: 

Use the editorial questions WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHY and HOW to help narrow your topic into a more manageable research question.

For more information on narrowing and broadening your research topic, visit our Research Fundamentals guide, from which this material is taken.

  • URL: https://library.cod.edu/speech
  • Last Updated: Sep 23, 2024 9:12 PM
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