Page 32 - PUBLIC SPEAKING_Neat

Then list in each column the first four or five items that come to mind. The result
might look like this:

People Places Things
Barack Obama Afghanistan iPad
Hillary Clinton Grand Canyon Twitter
Sarah Palin The moon 3D TV
Lady Gaga My hometown Movies

Events Process
Graduation Learning CPR
Passover Cooking Indian Food
Chinese New Year Avoiding credit card debt
Cinco de Mayo Writing a job resume

Concepts Natural Phenomena

Conservatism Asteroids
Medical Ethic Lightning
Free-speech theories Tornadoes
Buddhism Earthquake

Problems Plans and Policies
National debt Offshore drilling
Terrorism Charter school
Election Fraud Domestic partner benefit
Campus crime Immigration reform

Very likely, several items on our lists will strike us as potential topics. If not,
take the items we find most intriguing and compose sub lists for each. Try to free-
associate. Write down a word or idea. What does that trigger in our mind?
Whatever it is, write that down next, and keep going until we have four or five
ideas on our list. For example, working from the lists printed above, one student
composed sub lists for movies, campus crime, and lightning:

Movies Campus Crime Lightning
Academy Awards Police Thunder
Prizes Fingerprints Noise
Lotteries Hands Traffic

Gambling Gloves Air pollution

Can you follow the trail of association? In the first column, movies made the
student think of the Academy Awards. The Academy Awards are prizes. Prizes

26 | Public Speaking