Real Communication An Introduction

Chapter 12  Preparing and Researching Presentations 349

begin, simply write a main word or phrase in a circle; then create a web or collec-
tion of ideas inspired by the nucleus word or phrase. See Figure 12.1 for a sample
of clustering for the nucleus phrase country music. As the process continues,
you’ll be struck by some concepts that might be suitable topics for your speech.
In a sense, it’s like Googling your own brain, starting out with a word or concept
and branching to form a web of links to related thoughts.

Narrowing Your Topic

Now that you have searched for potential topics, it’s time to make a choice. Your
goal is to select the topic that best meets the following three criteria:

1. Is it a topic you are interested in and know something about?


2. Does the topic meet the criteria specified in the assignment?


3. Is it a topic that your audience will find worthwhile?

Once you are satisfied that your topic meets these criteria, you can begin
to consider how to break down your topic further so that it is more specific
and manageable. This will aid you a great deal in your research (a topic we will
discuss later in this chapter) because it is considerably easier to find informa-
tion on a specific topic (traditional Jewish foods served for Passover) than an
extremely general one (the Jewish faith). One way to narrow down your topic
is to break it up into categories. Write your general topic at the top of a list,
with each succeeding word a more specific or concrete topic. As illustrated in
Figure 12.2, you might begin with the very general topic of volunteering and
then narrow the topic down a step at a time until you focus on one particu-
lar volunteer program (for example, Read to a Child) and decide to persuade
your listeners about the advantages of offering personal time to read to a local
elementary school child.

COUNTRY

MUSIC

Nashville,

TN

Johnny

Cash

Dixie

Chicks

Lady

Antebellum

Alternative

Country

Grammy

Awards

Censorship

Grand

Ole

Opry

FIGURE 12.1

EXAMPLE OF A WEB

OF ASSOCIATIONS

PRODUCED BY

CLUSTERING Thinking

about “country music” can

lead to numerous possible

speech topics.