Example
General Interest: Ancient Egypt
Specific Topic: Pharoah Akhenaten
José-Manuel Benito Álvarez, [CC BY-SA 2.5]
1. Select
Choosing & Narrowing Your Topic
- What interests you? Are you into anime, hiking, geology, video games, Italian cuisine...? Choose a topic that you will enjoy learning, or learning more, about. After all, you have to speak about this topic to your entire class and genuine interest shows!
- Once you choose a topic, you may need to narrow it down. If your topic is too broad, it may prove difficult to outline your speech because you will be overloaded with too much irrelevant information when researching.
- With a specific topic in mind, you are ready to start gathering the factual information you need to either inform or persuade.
Sources for Choosing a Topic
- Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL) This link opens in a new windowThis digital reference collection contains subject-specific encyclopedias and other sources on a variety of topics. The entries provide a substantial amount of information on your topic of choice.
- Oxford Reference Online This link opens in a new windowThis databases allows you to explore areas of interest by subject. The brief entries in many of the reference works in this collection can help with learning enough about an unfamiliar topic to narrow it down, or to just explore something new.
- Oxford Research Encyclopedias This link opens in a new windowComprehensive collections of in-depth, peer-reviewed summaries on an ever-growing range of topics. New approved articles and new summaries are added to the encyclopedia on an ongoing basis.
- SAGE Reference Online This link opens in a new windowThis collection of SAGE reference works has an array of subject areas within the social science fields. You can search by the type of resource, such as "encyclopedias", to ensure your results will contain the type of information you need.