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Persuasive speeches are among the most useful forms of communication to large groups where the speaker addresses a topic and tries to win the audience’s confidence. This involves the use of logic, tact, ethical approach, and an element of emotion. With the blend of these, a persuasive speech can help you make a compelling argument your listeners will be receptive to. Apart from sound reasoning, a persuasive speech also requires credible data, tangible evidence, and trustworthy sources. These sources can help you tie together your claims with empirical backing, helping you establish your thesis’ primacy before the audience. Enabling a competitive environment, persuasive speeches are ideal for a college setting, where academic rigor meets passion and interest to do better.
Apart from choosing a good persuasive speech topic for college, supporting it with the necessary research and practicing sufficiently is just as integral to delivery. By picking an engaging topic, you allow yourself to become invested in your assignment—an indispensable aspect of giving emotive persuasive speeches. Since speeches also come with set time limits, it becomes important to use the topic and the content effectively to build credibility within the speech. While facing strangers is one, convincing them of your standpoint is a completely different aspect entailed in the persuasive strand of writing and communication. Below are 100 persuasive speech topics for college students to choose from. The sections that follow also include essential writing tips, a basic outline, and a few points to remember when putting together a convincing persuasive speech.
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25 Interesting Persuasive Speech Topics for College
Persuasive speeches are meant to be engaging and informative. It’s essential to select a topic that can strike a chord with your listeners, so you can take the advantage of an audience that’s keen on listening to what you have to say. Colleges and universities are often brimming with activity and energy; make sure you take this into account when planning your speech, so you don’t end up boring your listeners. Here are 25 interesting persuasive speech examples and prompts for your next assignment:
Persuasive Speech Outline
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Writing an evocative persuasive speech requires a set outline with content that flows freely, so you can deliver it with ease. While persuasive essays might be more expository in certain areas, speeches, on the other hand, are often timed and need you to place the point before your audience succinctly. Before getting to the main components of an outline for your persuasive speech, it’s important to know the 3 elements it needs to come forth as effective and to help you convince your audience of your standpoint.
This includes:
- Ethos: Ethos, or the Greek word for ethics, encompasses an integral aspect of all persuasive speeches. Ethos helps you build credibility throughout your speech and enables you to draw the audience’s attention with legitimacy. Apart from using examples cited by trustworthy sources and well-known experts, it’s also important to draw a connection between your reasoning and real-world anecdotes to help you reach out to the listeners. Apart from examples, make it a point to also encompass your points as causes that are ethical and for the betterment of society. People are more likely to pay attention to arguments when they consider aspects of the greater good. That apart, it would also be beneficial to state all evidence, whether in support or against your claim. This will help you build an unbiased approach to your topic. The opposing claims can later be disproven to help support your assertions in the course of the speech. You can go on to build credibility by including these components and focusing on ethos.
- Logos: Logos, or logic, forms the basis of persuasive arguments. Given that most people rely on rationality to make a judgment on issues, the element of logos forms an indispensable part of a persuasive speech. This holds true especially for college students, as an academic environment is often built on its focus on empirical substantiations of stated facts and claims. Apart from stating plain facts related to the topic you’re speaking about, connecting the topic with these facts and your rationalization is just as imperative. Not only does it bring lucidity, but it also aids the listener to make connections with your claim and evaluate it for what it is in an unbiased manner. Logos also promotes authority over the topic and allows you to build lasting trust with the audience.
- Pathos: All persuasion comes with an element of pathos, or emotion, without which arguments would fall short and come off as mechanical. While convincing people on an emotional front is essential when you’re looking to bring people over to your side, it is also just as important to speak emotively when delivering your speech. The content of your speech must be written in such a manner that it is capable of evoking a range of strong emotions in your listeners to help you make them more perceptive of what you convey. Use tonality in speech, and narrate anecdotes with a passion to allow your audience to connect with you and see your perspective for what it is.
Once you have conceptualized the ethos, logos, and pathos components of your persuasive speech, you can proceed to structure an outline to help you collate your thoughts. Here’s what a simple persuasive speech outline looks like:
1. Introduction, or Opening: Impactful speeches need to have a strong opening to enrapture the audience right at the beginning. Apart from being an attention-getter, it also creates a great first impression. Often, a statistic or stating a fact is a great way to get started. To make things more interesting for your listeners, it’s always better to begin with an element that ties together both the topic at hand and the audience themselves. This can create an instant connection and add the pathos element to your persuasive speech. Getting people instantly invested in your speech is key to holding their attention for the entirety of it. Opening statements go on to set the tone of your entire exposition and are indispensable in case you’re looking to create a lasting influence on the crowd.
2. Body, or Argument: Begin the body of your speech by placing your position before the audience and elucidating it through a few points. Each of them should be clear and must make perfect sense so they’re easily understood. Use facts and original research to back up your opinions, and state how your position is connected to them and why the facts justify your stand on the issue. Use anecdotes and real-world examples to further develop your position and draw parallels between them and your position to gain the confidence of the audience. Along with examples and facts, analogies also help you simplify the content of your speech and allow you to strike a personal connection by explaining your thesis in the speech. Also, take time to address the opposing views and expand upon why they don’t hold up to scrutiny. You can do this by either using logic to find deficiencies in the opposing argument or by bringing out unaddressed aspects of the topic. Not making sweeping generalizations and painting all counter-views with a single brush stroke would be wise. Such claims are often hard to justify using facts. Instead, stating credible opposition viewpoints can help you build an unbiased approach to your topic. Be honest when stating the counter positions, and state them plainly to avoid coming off as dismissive or condescending. The best way to approach this would be to state the opposing position followed by reasoning the flaws in the counterargument through the tenets of sound logic and empirical evidence.
3. Conclusion, or Closing: While reiterating the main argument, a persuasive speech’s closing statement also needs to evoke thought and bring the listeners closer to the position you present. The concluding points must be succinct and impactful, so the listeners always have something to relate your speech with even after it has concluded. If your speech requires a call to action, invoking it during the conclusion would be apt. For persuasive speeches that are for or against causes, it might be wise to convince the audience of the urgency that concerns your position. In case the concluding portions of your speech also allow for questions, ensure you listen to the audience’s questions with patience and answer each of them with the requisite information and considerable detail. If someone from the audience positions themselves in opposition to your argument, consider their points carefully and only respond with objectivity when presenting counter arguments.
25 Fascinating Persuasive Speech Topics for College
Whether it’s for an assignment or an event, persuasive speeches in a college setting are meant to be interesting, while acting as academic instruments that bring attention to important issues. You might also want to look into popular speeches concerning the issue at hand to draw inspiration from existing opinions that align with your own. Here are 25 fascinating persuasive speech topics to help you present thoughtful perspectives at college:
Tips to Put Together an Engaging Persuasive Speech for College
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Persuasive speeches are meant to be engaging and provide new insights to the audience while trying to convince them of your position. While bearing this in mind, it’s important to keep the speech interesting to avoid losing your listeners’ attention. While your assignment might come with a set of guidelines, it’s also important to stick to a few basic tenets of public speaking and the concepts of writing engaging speeches to ensure you deliver an impressive discourse on your topic. Below are a few tips to help you keep your audience glued to their seats as you go about putting forth your case for the topic:
Pick an Appealing Topic that Interests You
A topic that bores you will never be sufficiently engaging with your audience. People often pick up important cues from the speaker that reflect on their impressions of the speaker. An interesting topic also allows you to get invested in the speech-writing process, enabling you to better focus on putting together an enthralling exposition on the subject. Topics that don’t excite you are bound to become tedious as you progress through the research process. To put forth a convincing case on the matter, a certain degree of mental and emotional investment is quintessential so you come across as an emphatic orator when it’s your turn to speak. Passionate delivery will also get your audience’s attention and make sure they consider your approach with seriousness. Though you might not have the chance to always choose from what you know or like best, it might be wise to pick a topic that sparks at least some interest before you go about collecting material for it.
Avoid Conventional Topics
Though it might not be possible to always choose an entirely novel subject to base your speech on, it is important to avoid topics that are spoken about way too frequently. Matters like climate change are often overused in persuasive speeches, making it a potentially uninteresting topic for both evaluators and listeners. Fresh topics, on the other hand, are instantly attractive. Also, you needn’t always go over multiple books and web pages to look for a unique matter to address in your speech. Presenting a novel approach to an existing, common topic will work too because of the value it can add to the ongoing discourse on such matters. Unusual and novel perspectives are great hooks and keep the audience engaged throughout the speech and beyond. Invest sufficient time in looking through suitable topics and pick something that does not come off as drab and run of the mill.
State the Purpose Early On
Too many speakers go on for too long without actually introducing their position to their listeners. Not only does this confuse the gathering, but it also makes people lose interest in the speech. To deliver a convincing persuasive speech, it’s important to grab your audience’s attention as early as possible to ensure lasting interest. Introducing the thesis of your speech and the position you will be arguing from early into the speech also allows the audience to expect something concrete and clear. While this helps them remain prepared mentally, it also conveys that you’re straightforward, to the point, and do not believe in wasting time with mere fluff in your speech delivery. Have a good opening statement that presents your position while also inciting interest in the people you’re addressing.
Back up Professional Research with Sufficient Anecdotes
People are often ready to lend their ears to someone that’s talking when they’re ready to narrate a story. Persuasive speeches might commonly address several critical, complex, and controversial issues that encompass convoluted concepts. Explaining this in terms of mere logic and empiricism will appear dry and boring to the audience. Instead, you can use anecdotes, real-life examples, and even thought experiments to make the case you’re presenting more fascinating to the listeners. Also, focus on using a narrative tone when expanding upon the examples in your persuasive speech to ensure your audience doesn’t find the delivery to be monotonous and unidimensional in approach.
Practice
When it comes to speeches, there really is no alternative to practice. Practicing in front of a mirror or before your friends is a great way to test out your oratory skills. Experiment with different routines in your delivery to figure out what works best for your topic. Use a variety of literary devices in your writing to make the text more colorful and engaging. Deploy the right intonation in speech, and try to gain as much feedback from your peers as possible. This helps in fine-tuning your approach to fit what the crowd might expect when you get up on stage to put forth your arguments on the chosen topic.
25 Controversial Topics for a Persuasive Speech
Persuasive speeches are ideal vehicles for putting forth opinions that surround controversial topics. Society is rife with complex moral and ethical issues that require a balanced approach. While there might be multiple angles to a single issue, expanding upon your perspective using a persuasive speech can help you make your listeners rethink their beliefs and return to the negotiating table. A few controversial topics for a persuasive speech are listed below:
25 Good Topics for a Persuasive Speech
Numerous topics still require consensus and novel approaches. Weighing in your opinion through a persuasive speech can help you put forth your points coherently and in a manner that can also effectively change people’s attitudes. Here are some more topics for you to consider:
Persuasive speeches can be vehicles of opinion that perpetuate discourse. Considering the academic setting you will deliver your speech in, the scholastic benefits they entail are plenty. The tips and prompts offered in the above article are sure to help you put forth your point with poise and impact.
