I love museum gift shops.
They are bright, airy, and full of unique things. I enjoy flipping through the books and postcards, exploring the one-of-a-kind games and toys, and considering the housewares and furniture. Is this the day to buy the turtle-shaped Tiffany desk lamp?
While the gift shop is a great place to purchase a memento of your visit or a gift for a friend, it is not the place to experience and appreciate the carefully curated art and artifacts displayed in the museum galleries.
Imagine going to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and buying a postcard of Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” in the gift shop, but neglecting to go inside the museum to see the vibrant painting for yourself. Or, what if you made your way to the Louvre Museum in Paris and bought a Mona Lisa mug rather than standing in front of DaVinci’s “Mona Lisa,” watching her eyes follow you?
A postcard or coffee mug reproduction of a masterpiece is a lot like an putting an out-of-context quote or unreliable source in your speech (I’m looking at you, Brainy Quotes and Wikipedia): they may relate to your topic but lack the depth, complexity, and power of the real thing. In the end, shallow research is an inappropriate and ineffective replacement for searching out and using rich, high-quality sources.
To help you choose solid support for your speech, let’s look at ways to find quality sources, seek diverse support, and record citation information.
Find Quality Sources
Once you have selected the topic for your speech, research will add to your knowledge and support your ideas. Begin the research process by finding and evaluating potential sources.
First, brainstorm a list of words or phrases related to your topic. Then use these keywords and phrases to conduct online searches with Google and Google Scholar (specializing in academic sources), look for books and journals at your local library, and talk with or listen to interviews from subject matter experts.
Once you have gathered potential sources, you can evaluate them using four tests. If your source passes the tests, keep it!
- Is the source credible? Verify that the author is an expert on the subject and that the information is from a recognizable and reliable site. An article published by a professor in an academic journal is credible; a blog post by an anonymous author is not.
- Is the source published? Locate the name of the publisher, city, and date. Publishers verify the information they publish adding a layer of credibility.
- Is the source recent? Research, data, and statistics change quickly, so try to find the most recent information.
- Is the source relevant? You won’t want to waste time reading irrelevant information, so only choose sources that are closely related to your topic.
By finding and evaluating potential sources, you’ll be able to choose a wide variety of quality ones.
Seek Diverse Support
It is tempting to limit your research to articles from a quick Google search. Instead, consider a wider variety of sources, which will result in richer research and a more dynamic speech.
Look for essays and articles as well as experiments, surveys, interviews, literature reviews, encyclopedias, books, and relevant stories, which can serve as powerful illustrations. The key here is to choose a variety of sources that will appeal to a variety of listeners.
While there is no set number of sources required to write a compelling speech, you should consult enough sources to:
- Understand the topic. Reading a single article or book is a good introduction to a topic, but you’ll need to dig deeper if you want to truly understand a topic.
- Consider multiple perspectives. If you search hard enough, you’ll discover different viewpoints that can provide a more complete picture of your topic.
- Encounter related controversies. Within every topic, there are points of view that clash. If you only learn about the superficial facts, you’ll never be able to get to the heart of the issues.
- Support your claims. At the end of your research, you’ll need to support claims. You need enough sources to find support for the ideas you want to communicate.
- Establish your ethos. You’ll be better prepared to establish your ethos, or credibility, if you are well-informed, competent, and trustworthy.
Record Citation Information
Naturally, you want to keep a careful record of your sources, including the author, title, publisher, date, and page number(s) or link. A citation for any source you use in your speech needs to be mentioned verbally in the speech and listed on a works cited page. A citation is essential because it gives credit where credit is due.
Now is the time to develop a habit of meticulously citing sources. This is a standard that will apply to all your academic and professional work and also, as you can see in Romans 13, a biblical principle: “Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owned, honor to whom honor is owed” (Romans 13:7 ESV). You “owe” the original author for the material you are using in your speech: “pay” them by giving them credit and citing your sources properly.
Take the Next Steps
Finding solid support makes a difference! Once you do, you are ready to take the next steps: skim the sources, record key ideas, and draft a working thesis. Then, you can decide which sources you actually want to quote or summarize in your speech.
By choosing a variety of high quality, reliable sources of different types, you’ll be able to write an interesting speech that establishes you as a trustworthy messenger and allows you to appeal to a wide audience.
And let me know what you think about the turtle lamp.
(This post is adapted from Lesson 3 in NCFCA Christian Speech & Debate’s Foundations of Speech Curriculum. For more guidance and speech-writing help, you can purchase your own Student, Teacher, or Family Bundle in the NCFCA Shop.)
