• impact the belief or behavior of your audience
• significant and contemporary issue with meaning and influence for the lives of your audience
• Take a position on a substantive topic
• impact the belief or behavior of your audience
• significant and contemporary issue with meaning and influence for the lives of your audience
• 6 sources - 4 of them credible & at least 3 different types of supporting materials
Even though the Persuasive Speech is towards the end of the semester, you might want to consider choosing a prospective topic early in the semester, and keeping track of current events related to it so that, by the time you have to choose your topic, you may have many of the resources you need to fulfill your research requirements.
How best to do this? With the Internet of course!
Choose one major newspaper website such as the New York Times, one state-level newspaper, the Indianapolis Star, and the Terre Haute Tribune-Star. Visit the sites every few days. For longer access you have to register at the NYT, and after about 7 days, you can no longer access Indianapolis Star articles for free. Do a Search for items that might be of use to you. Read the opinion or op-ed columns.
Find some news blogs put out by newspapers, wire services or recognized journalists, NOT 'citizen journalists'. Visit C-Span.
Get on an email newsletter list, RSS or Twitter Feed and when you find something, print it in PDF format, and put your citation information into your EndNote Library and link the PDF of the article to your Reference, so, later, you can quickly find the article again to make your notes.
Some magazines have a conservative or liberal point of view. If that type of point of view would be useful to you, then check out the titles. In addition, middle-of-the-road all-topic magazines and some that lead you to opinion polls are listed under the Persuasive Speeches tab [above].
EXAMPLES OF PAST ISU TOPICS:
