Informative Speech Assignment
Overview
Informative speech assignment instructions for use COM 231: Public Speaking
Assignment Instructions
Topic
For the first speech, you will draw upon your own cultural knowledge to inform an audience of your peers about some aspect of who you are. You belong to many different cultures based on your race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, religion, language, ability, and group memberships. You also have personal interests and talents relating to sports, music, literature, media, occupation, family status, and more.
You may choose to speak about something at the surface level of culture, such as food, flags, festivals, clothes, holidays, music, games, literature, language, or art. Or, you may choose to speak about something at a deeper level of culture, such as ways of handling emotion, child rearing principles, thoughts on wellness and diseases, spirituality, and so on.
In describing an aspect of your cultural identity, you must balance the need to generalize for the sake of time and understandability, without falling into the trap of stereotyping. Explaining your personal connection to your topic should help you to do this.
Specs
- Time: Between 5-7 minutes. Speeches shorter than 5 minutes or longer than 7 minutes will have 1 letter grade deducted.
- Delivery: Extemporaneous (researched and prepared in advance, but not necessarily memorized and not read from a script).
- Note cards: Up to 2 note cards are allowed.
- Research: Minimum of 3 verbal citations of credible sources.
- Visual aid: Required (see below for more info).
- Organization: Clear intro, body, and conclusion; body of speech uses an organizational pattern from the textbook or class lecture.
Visual Aid
You may use an analog visual aid (like a poster or handout), or a digital visual aid (like a PowerPoint presentation or video clip). Guidelines:
- Everything on a poster must be large enough to be seen from across the room. If the audience can’t see it, it’s not a visual aid!
- Handouts should be given at the end of a speech, or else should be incorporated as an interactive component of the speech. If you pass out flyers, expect the audience to want to look at them right away.
- Slideshow presentations should have no more than 5 slides, and should include primarily images (convey visual information, not just verbal information).
- Video or audio clips should total no more than 1 minute of your speech time.
Example Informative Speech Topics
I strongly encourage you to come up with your own speech topic; nothing is off-limits or taboo as long as it meets the assignment requirements. If you are really stumped, you may use the list below as inspiration.
- Traditional Chinese festivals
- Tibetan prayer flags
- Classical Indian dance
- U.S. Army uniform patches
- The Stonewall riots
- NCAA rules for student-athletes
- Lumbee Indian music
- Historical markers in your town
- Aztec pottery
- Native American Code Talkers
- Subaru's gay-and-lesbian–focused marketing campaign
- The Bhagavad Gita
- Japanese anime culture
- Danish concept of hygge
- Using ASL in deaf culture
- East Coast / West Coast hip-hop rivalry
- Protective styling for textured hair
- Indigenous tattoos
- Equestrian dressage
- Famous individual from your culture
- Difference between gender identity and gender expression
- Zulu tribal baskets
- Firefighter artifacts