Team Speech Ideas

The team issues/topics need to be current event issues. This does not mean you have to do something dealing with politics (you are welcome to through) but rather something that would appear as an article topic in the news section of a newspaper or news magazine. The topics should reflect upper division critical thinking and scholarship.

Remember, you and your partner(s) do not have to be on polar opposite sides of the issue your team has selected. You simply need to present to distinctive sides of the chosen issue. All speeches on a particular team should be in the same category.

Example1: Your Team Issue is Euthanasia, possible individual topics for this issue might

be:

1. Total ban on any human euthanasia

2. Physician assisted euthanasia for those with terminal illnesses

3. Family assisted euthanasia for those with terminal illnesses

4. People with terminal illnesses should be allowed to die at any time after their

diagnosis

5. People with terminal illnesses should only be allow to die in the later stages of

their illness.

(you would not do ALL of these topics, just one per person on the team)

Example 2: Your Team Issue is Organ Donation, possible individual topics for this issue might be:

1. People should be allowed to sell organs while they are living on a free open

market basis (they can sell who they want to, for the price they want to).

2. Hospitals should pay for organs harvested from the dead with the money going

to the person's estate.

3. Families should be able to sell organs of their deceased relatives.

4. Organ donation should be completely voluntary with no monetary benefits

involved.

5. People should be able to decide who their organs are donated to (so if they

die, they can have designated their organs can only go to a child or only go to

someone of a particular background).

(you would not do ALL of these topics, just one per person on the team)

The individual topics need to be distinctive enough from each other than you aren't constantly over lapping information - the two speeches should not be slight variations of each other but rather discrete individual speeches. You will need to work together to make sure you are not having a lot of overlap.

However, the topics need to be connected. So there should be a clear connection, via the main issue, between the topics

Topics used for the first persuasive speech are not allowed for this assignment.

Please avoid the following topics (unless you have a unique way to approach the topic) because they are either difficult to change anyone's mind concerning the topic or are very one-sided topics (we pretty much all agree one way or another).

Drunk Driving

Cigarette Smoking

Drug Abuse

Healthy Eating/Exercise

Abortion

Death Penalty

Gun Control

Euthanasia