Why Are Good Persuasive Speech Topics Important?

Do you need to prepare a great persuasive speech? The trickiest thing about this is choosing the winning topic that will blow away your target audience and make people want more. While somebody thinks it is so easy to do, the truth is the opposite. You need to keep a lot of things in your mind while selecting a proper idea. With this guide and a list of nice persuasive speech topics, your path to success will be quicker and less stressful.

How to Choose the Best Persuasive Topic?

Perhaps you have been practicing the speeches since you started to go to elementary school. But when you are at a college or a high school, you can’t select the topic which sounds like “Why is Titanic my favorite film?” or “Why do I like playing football.” Now you need to prefer the idea which will be relevant to your educational level and can teach the target audience something new.

In other words, now you need to present some necessary and meaningful information rather than just talking about your interests/favorite activities/books, etc. Just when you reach the higher educational level, your teacher is going to evaluate your skills in accordance with numerous factors. 

For instance, your speaking style, presentation manner, written content, and your skills to grab the attention of the audience. All in all, the idea that you are going to choose from lots of other persuasive speech topics must meet certain criteria:

• It must provoke an interest;
• It’s something that you are interested in;
• It must not be overdone.

Don’t Be Afraid of Your Own Emotions

Once you are passionate about something, all your body will fill with emotions. It’s when the best speeches are born because you are inspired and interested. It means your target audience will also share your passion. If you start to talk about the issue that you, in fact, do not care about, people will understand it with the first sentence, and you will not be able to grab their attention anymore. 

At the same time, if you care about a chosen topic and you want to share all your knowledge and ideas on it, then people will be listening to you without any doubts. Do not be afraid to talk about some controversial topics. The main idea is to encourage the audience to join the speech even if you go through some debates afterward. Real emotions are above all here.

Keep a Target Audience in Mind

Choose the topic that will correspond to your audience. It is a big mistake to start using lots of jargon if the room is full of English majors.  They will either not understand or will not be interested in the stuff that you are talking about. 

The same works for businessmen. They expect to hear some factual information instead of a long text with no sense at all. This is why most politicians use different styles and topics depending on the audience they are going to talk with. Remember this while choosing a topic for your speech.

Don’t be Generic

It is better to avoid talking about some common, well-known topics. Even if you want to say something important, perhaps people have already heard all this information. It would be a real challenge to keep their attention as they will be distracted if they understand what you are going to say next. 

If, for some reason, you must talk about the generic topic, for instance, the teacher assigned you “Pollution of rivers,” you should try to take advantage of it. Think of an angle that you have not heard before and go in this direction. Impress the audience that they don’t know and don’t expect to hear from you. 

For instance, instead of talking about how much rubbish people throw into the rivers, you may focus your attention on the way modern enterprises may run more sustainable businesses and stop polluting water.

Top Persuasive Speech Topics to Succeed

The process of preparing a winning speech won’t be a challenge for you anymore. Here is the list of the best persuasive speech topics. Look through all of them, decide what field appeals to you more, and choose a particular idea that you feel comfortable with.

Culture, Art, And Media

1. Should music and art therapy replace traditional talk therapy?
2. Do TV shows prevent or encourage youth to perform suicide?
3. Do romantic films with perfect plots lead to heartbreaks?
4. Should tattoos be recognized as unprofessional?
5. Should improper languages be cut from classic literature?
6. Do films about murders encourage people to become criminals?
7. Listening to music must be restricted in the classroom.
8. How can lyrics affect the person’s life?
9. Why do people listen to depressing songs when their mood is down?
10. It is important to play some musical instruments at school.

Education

1. Is remote education harmful or beneficial for students?
2. How can schools teach children about sex more efficiently?
3. What is a crucial book every American high-school student must-read?
4. Should a class about wellness become a part of the school curriculum?
5. What are the advantages of doing preschool education free for families?
6. Is it reasonable to switch to the metric system?
7. What are the advantages of year-round educational establishments?
8. Do charter schools assist or harm low-income communities?
9. Is independent learning worth consideration?
10. At what age should children start sex education?

Sport

1. Is it necessary to teach students swimming at school?
2. Should the salary of female athletes be equal to what male athletes have?
3. Should boxing be recognized as illegal?
4. Must drug tests be regular for athletes?
5. Are there situations when athletes may be allowed to consume asteroids?
6. Gender issues must not be considered in sport.
7. Should athletes get a salary for being in a college sports team?
8. Is cheerleading a sport or no?
9. Funding of college sports teams: pros and cons
10. The comparison of Messi and Ronaldo is foolish.

Family and Religion

1. What is the most advantageous style of parenting and why?
2. Is it good to force kids to go to the church, or it’s better to let them decide on their own?
3. Should parents support such myths as Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus?
4. What to choose: a kindergarten or being with parents at home?
5. Does a community play a significant role in upbringing the children?
6. Who should talk with kids about sex: parents or school?
7. What are the advantages of being a member of some religious community?
8. Is learning about ancestors crucial for a kid’s future?
9. Should priests be allowed to start a family?
10. Should religious establishments pay taxes?

Environment

1. What impacts of earthquakes have people not heard about before?
2. The way of how people destroy the forests today.
3. The negative effect of fossil fuels on the atmosphere.
4. Should exotic animals like in the natural habitat?
5. Utilization of nuclear power: safe or not?
6. What are the potential risks of GMO food?
7. The ways of preserving trees and decreasing paper waste.
8. Is it possible to predict a flood impact?
9. The ways of coping with the population explosion.
10. Should hunting be illegal?

Health and medicine

1. Must fast food taxing become an efficient way to cope with obesity?
2. Meat-based diet & plant-based diet: which one wins?
3. Should sweets and soda be completely banned in schools?
4. Should health insurance cover alternative medical treatment?
5. Does eating meat influence the person’s health?
6. What are alternatives for animal testing?
7. The impact of insomnia on the overall state of health.
8. Depression and its effect on the immune system.
9. Medical marijuana: pros and cons
10. Preventing and overcoming violence against kids.

Government

1. Is it reasonable to allow the president to serve more than two terms?
2. Whose face must be printed on the next new U.S.currency?
3. Is it necessary to reduce a military budget?
4. A border between Mexico and the USA: pros and cons
5. Who is recognized as the best president of the USA?
6. Should voting be obligatory?
7. The independence of Scotland: pros and cons
8. Should Puerto Rico be a new state?
9. Must famous people, who break the law, get more serious penalties?
10. Should the government restrict all types of tobacco?

Science and technology

1. Is AI a potential threat to the community?
2. Should using drones be allowed for military service?
3. Should self-driving vehicles be illegal?
4. What is the maximum for screen time?
5. Is building a moon colony reasonable?
6. The best options for renewable energy.
7. Organ donation: pros and cons.
8. Must the Internet be regulated more strictly by the government?
9. Should sell the clients’ information be illegal?
10. Should the Internet be free of charge for everybody?

Social media

1. Are influencers and bloggers harmful or beneficial for modern society?
2. How must cyberbullying be punished at present?
3. When is it better to let kids start using smartphones?
4. Should safe social media activity be taught at schools?
5. Social media and children: when is it better to start an online experience?
6. The most reliable sources of information and news these days.
7. Online & offline friendships: are the benefits equal?
8. The impact of selfies on boosting self-confidence.
9. Teens should be careful about the thing that they post on social media
10. Free social media must be controlled by the government.

How to Impress the Audience

Once you have selected a persuasive speech topic and conducted deep research on it, you can start the writing process. Make sure that you fully understand what you are going to write about. Otherwise, you will not sound persuasive and will not be able to grab the people’s attention. The following points will help you prepare a stunning speech easily:

• Decide on a thesis. Determine what you expect from the audience, and make sure your speech has a clear call-to-action. What message do you want to deliver or what to convenience people in?
• Arrange central arguments. Put all arguments that you have collected for your speech in a logical order. All your ideas and points must flow smoothly from one another.
• Include relevant examples.  You should use only reliable sources when looking for proper examples. Avoid citing Wikipedia. Instead, think about adding personal anecdotes to increase the impact of the overall speech. 
• Add a strong emotional connection with the audience.  If you want to grab the attention of the audience, you need to appeal to people’s feelings. Recall some common beliefs or a sense of nostalgia. Consider other tactics to install emotional connection with people you are talking to.
• Address counterarguments. Do not wait until the audience comes up with some objections. Do it yourself and try to dispute them with extra examples, anecdotes, and facts.
• Finish speech with a strong summary. Here you need to restate a thesis, recall emotional connection, and do your best to encourage a target audience to act at once.

When your speech is finished, you should start practice. Practice as much as you need to feel more confident.  You should be fully ready to communicate with the target audience. Perhaps a few attempts will be a real disaster, but soon you will notice progress.

In case you are experiencing some difficulties with selecting the topic or organizing your thoughts, then consider cooperation with a professional writing company. Specialists are aware of all peculiarities of a persuasive speech and will simplify the process of its preparation.