What Do The Kids Like These Days
 

If you're in college, or able to emulate someone who is, which topic would you rather hear a speech about for five minutes?

VOLUNTEERING?
-be happier and more productive
-decide what interests you
-free up some time
-find opportunities

OR

PAPER BOAT FOLDING?
-bored while happening to pass lakes, streams, and other bodies of water in your local area?
-find a piece of paper
-fold a boat
-play like a dork

While the volunteering message might seem smarmier than the slacker alternative, at the end of it all, I think I'd appreciate the time spent discussing volunteer ideas more than if I were to have spent the same amount hearing about stuff I already do to kill time.

And though I'm one of the oldest regular members here, yes, I'm in college.

Also, this belongs in General Discussion more than Community. Moving it there.

To be perfectly honest, the question is less important than you think. While considering what your audience wants to hear is important, it's less important than what you want to talk about. For those five minutes, the audience is yours and you can talk about whatever you want.

The question shouldn't be "what would they be interested in hearing?", but "how can I make them interested in what I want to talk about?". There's a way to do it for any subject, provided you know what you're talking about.

Volunteering would probably be a useful topic for college students. Depending on how you decide to speak on the subject, you may be able to make the presentation informative and entertaining. If I recognize that a speech may be dull, I try to find ways to interest the audience.

My Speech Com. teacher was so obessed with us figuring out what our audience wanted that she made us send 2 surveys to half the class per speech, and filling out 20 speech surveys per speech type takes more time than to write a very interesting speech about a topic the audience may/may not seem interested in at the beginning.

I attend a college that stresses volunteering like it is a requirement, so I would personally rather hear about how to make a paper boat and what a person can do with it. Is your speech to inform/demostrate? If so, you could make the boat while you explain how to and demostrate the uses so the auditory, visual, and kinestetic people can remember the speech. Good luck on your speech :).

It's important to relay any subject to the audience in a manner to which they can relate. When speaking of volunteering, discuss efforts that are important to young people. Ask around; see what concerns college students. Politics? The environment? Animal rights? Know your audience and you'll know of what to speak.

Find groups in your area to which young people belong and research what they do. And find groups that have wide membership eligibilities. Volunteer organizations composed of people from very specific religions or racial groups are fine, but spending too much time on groups like those may alienate audience members who wouldn't fit in.

Get stories about young people who've made a difference. Don't just present dull facts and statistics. People love stories, especially when they're about folks similar to themselves. Call those volunteer groups and ask if there are any inspirational tales from their young members. If you demonstrate that you've put effort into your speech, an audience will respond with the proper level of enthusiasm.

And some general speechifying advice:

Address the crowd, not the podium. The podium isn't listening to you.

If you find a spot, be funny. But don't be a clown. Avoid cliched humor. If you think a joke might be cliched, it is.

Don't be afraid of what the audience thinks of you. You're not there for a criticism. Don't let it become one. If someone actually heckles you, don't heckle back. As a speaker, you should be above such actions and the audience might not respect you if show the same lack of class as the disruptive jerk in the ninth row.

Most importantly, breathe. If you don't, you'll rush. Should you find yourself hurrying, stop and take about five seconds to reset the pace. The audience won't mind, trust me. A pregnant pause is an excellent way to restore everyone's attention upon the speaker.

I hope this helps you some.

Wow. Awesome responses. I'm leaning toward volunteering because it's more interesting if related well. The trick would be keeping it from becoming persuasive. The audience motivation would have to be very brief and subtle because the focus should be on how to volunteer.

Speech classes are a bitch because of the audience size. I get really nervous as soon as I start to make a speech and pretty much have a fight or flight response -- but it should decrease over time. I've spoken to large audiences of around 500 people and done pretty well just by pretending there is no audience and reading aloud, but no. Any job anyone will ever get with a college degree will require public speaking skills. Did you know that?

Thanks, Crash, for the idea of using stories to illustrate the process. I think it'd be best to just phrase each step in some kind of example form, though. Again with the avoiding persuasive tone thing.

I actually know a way to do both, and I've wanted to do it for a while. There's an event here where we sail paper boats down a river. It's fer da kids, and I'm sure they need volunteers.

So I would please like the poll to be multie choice, thanks in advance.

p.s. There actually is an event like this, I'll find the link later.

To be completely honest, I think you could say a lot about paper boat folding. Trace the history of it, that sort of thing. Volunteering, to me, sounds like a clichéd subject. Unless the first couple of seconds of your speech are really entertaining, I think you're going to lose a lot of your audience. Not saying it can't be done, but I would chose paper boat folding.

I know what you mean. I've been giving speeches for almost 5 years and I still get nervous at the beginning of giving a speech. I normally try to pretend that the audience doesn't exist...except for their eyes since eye contact is important. Communication is a very important job skill and many people tend to make fun of Communication majors b/c they think the most they can do is say "Do you want fries with that?" and sound nice while saying it. It's nice to see someone else who respects how important public speaking can be in reality.

Commies unite!