PRES. Week of Oct. 24

INFORMATIVE SPEECHES

The function of an informative speech is simply to inform the audience about a topic that should be interesting or relevant to them. You will focus on the information not on your opinion about the topic.
In real informative speeches happen all the time: students present on a topic {e.g. Shakespearan Theater}, salespeople present a new product, scientists report on their research [at conferences, seminars, etc.], employers report on new projects or the success of new products on the market…

Informative speech follow the same basic speech pattern: START (hook, introduction); MIDDLE (the detailed presentation point by point); FINISH (conclusion, q-a period)

STEPS TO TAKE:
1. find a topic you (and your audience) are interested in
2. learn more about it doing research
3. choose what to take out of your extensive research notes
4. organize your speech
5. you must provide a lot of supporting information: a) summary of your research, b) examples, c) explanatory information, d) statistics, e) quotations
For your presentation you will have to choose among the following topics:

ENVIRONMENT

Recycling, global warming, acid rain, rain forests, air pollution, endangered species, toxic waste, population control

HEALTH

Medical costs, nutrition and health, vegetarian diets, stress, eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia), exercise, junk food, non-Western medicine, genetic engineering
TECHNOLOGY
Space travel, life on other planets, robots, animal experiments, organ transplants, virtual reality, medical research

EDUCATION

Bilingual education, large-scale testing, computers and learning, high-school dropouts, working students, sex education
ENTERTAINMENT
Violence on TV, movie rating system, athletes’ salaries

SOCIAL POLITICAL CONCERNS

Youth gangs, drugs use/abuse, gun control, vandalism, rape/date rape, abortion, the death penalty, causes or racism, gay/lesbian rights, affirmative action, the graying of Korea, worldwide starvation, drunk drivers,

To get more ideas for your informative speech, you can visit the following links:
http://www.speech-writers.com/informative_speeches.htm