Page 66 - Between One and Many The Art and Science of Public Speaking

Chapter 2 Your First Speech 33

It may seem odd, at fi rst, to think of a speech as an invention. However, just
as it was not enough for the designers at Apple to have the idea for the iPod, it is
not enough for you just to have an idea for a speech. You need to invest time and
effort in inventing the substance of what you plan to say. Where do you go for the
substance of your speech? Here are some general suggestions, which we develop
in more detail in Chapter 7.

Personal Experience

As we noted in discussing topic selection, begin with your own experiences.
Each of us has had experiences that make us unique. You may be able to rely
on hobbies or past job experiences for an early informative speech; for example,
one of our students who worked as a beekeeper gave a fascinating speech on
honey bees.
Speaking about matters with which you have fi rsthand experience connects
you to your message. What’s more, this personal connection may also tell you
how to connect your message to the personal and professional needs of your au-
dience. For example, a successful actress, who was enrolled in one of the author’s
classes at the University of Southern California, gave a speech on how to break
into “show biz.” Unfortunately, she failed to mention her own experience, which
included a role in a Clint Eastwood movie and a recurring role on a television
sitcom. Had she done so, her speech would have connected more effectively to
the audience, in effect saying, “If I can do this, so can you!”
Even though your personal experience and knowledge are good sources with
which to start, don’t stop there. No matter how intense your experience or ex-
tensive your knowledge, there is always more to learn. In the effort to augment
personal experience and knowledge, consult other sources as well.

Outside Sources

When we are given a topic to research, most of us head immediately for our
computer and access a free search engine such as Google. For example, when we
typed the words “public speaking” into the Google search engine, we received
over 78 million “hits” in less than a second—far too many to be useful. That’s
why you will fi nd numerous “sponsored” links on Google which are actually ads
paid for by Web sites to get you to click on their link. Furthermore, there’s no
easy way to distinguish between reliable and valid sites, and those that are just
popular. We won’t discourage you from “googling” your topic, but we do want
you to go beyond Google in this class.
One of the great benefi ts of being a college student is that you have resources
available to you for research purposes that go beyond those available to the av-
erage person. For example, not only do you have access to a physical library,
housing thousands—perhaps millions—of books, periodicals, and documents,
you may also have access to innumerable proprietary computer resources. For
instance, many students have access to databases such as Academic Search, which
indexes over four thousand periodicals covering everything from the sciences
and humanities to popular culture. Those students may also have access to elec-