Speech Topics for Starters!

Ok. hey everybody, hope you are having a good week back from break. As you all know, Acadec competition is coming up real soon. Starters will have to present a prepared speech to Mr. Hall on Friday. Ok so a lot of the starters including myself are having trouble with understanding exactly what our speech is supposed to be. At this point I honestly don't really have a clue,and a lot of you starters I already know are like me too. So I have come up with a list of some good speech topics you should consider talking about. Ok so here is the list. Hope you find something that you are interested in. Remember you only have one week to think of something and memorize it! Good Luck!

Speech Topic List
 Discrimination against (fill in the blank).
 Energy independence
 Political polling
 The demise of the newspaper
 The Scrabulous-Mattel dispute on Facebook
 The power of conventional wisdom
 LASIK versus genetic engineering—is there a difference?
 Foreign bathrooms
 Converse with someone historical
 A brief history of chocolate
 Sustainable development in the Andes
 The impact of ubiquitous Internet
 The economic theory of arbitrage
 The reality show “Man Versus Beast”—a new low?
 People who insist on having children with
“disabilities” like their own
 Drug ads
 Caffeine: should it be regulated?
 Hands-free driving laws
 Three things more dangerous than talking on the phone
while driving
 What someone from the past would think about today’s
world
 Alpaca farming
 An imaginary safari through the cities of America
 Praising the suburbs
 The aerial hunting of wolves
 The financial meltdown of 2008-2009
 The value of intuition (read Blink)
 The shortcomings of majority rule
 Tooth whitening
 Explore a cultural cuisine
 Everything I need to know, I learned from The Onion
 The “random walk” principle and the stock market
 The truth about college
 The Olympics used to have artistic and intellectual
events—research and advocate for their return
 Behavior and biology: how much do our bodies
control us?
 Is suffering ever good?
 The future of the water supply
 Afghanistan: what should we do?
 Different views of beauty.
 Religion: an agent of intolerance?
 Discrimination against the elderly
 Art and the Internet
 What if Helen Keller had been born today?
 Celebrity chefs (and Iron Chef)
 Tibet: crisis or cause célèbre?
 Educational systems in other countries: pros and cons
 A critique of the Academic Decathlon
 High school bullying: what are the consequences?
 Google’s plan to put data servers on ships to avoid
national laws
 The joys of teenage motherhood (this is a “shock”
speech and must be delicately handled)
 Comparing cartoons today to cartoons of yesteryear.
 America’s next great enemy—who, and why?
 The importance of pain in medical research.
 The value of prearranged marriages.
 The work of Doctors Without Borders
 The experience of an amputee
 What might Shakespeare have written today?
 How to negotiate: a crash course
 How your parents met
 The story of a deceased sibling
 Your first encounter with poverty
 Modern art—advancing or ridiculous?
 “Sticks and stones may hurt my bones, but words will
never hurt me.” Assess.
 Pick an everyday place and analyze it—a shopping
mall, an airport
 Libertarianism
 Dr. Horrible and the future of entertainment
 Take one event and report on how it was reported by
different media (for example, MSNBC and Fox News.)
 Propose a different way of electing the U.S. president.
 Discuss your first meeting with someone important to
you—say, an author, an actress, or an athlete.
 Weave song and prose together in an optimistic
speech about a “few of your favorite things.”
 Discuss what is meant by the phrase “life is a
revolving door.”
 Same sex marriage
 Stem cell research
 Broadway musicals
 Take a person—real or imagined—and offer a series
of snapshots of his or her life at different ages.
 The importation of drugs from India
 Make a case for illegal immigration.
 New laws requiring the public display of calorie
contents at fast food restaurants—good or bad?
 Defend Larry Summers for his comments about
women in the sciences
 American policies toward Cuba.
 Discrimination against people who weigh more.
 A day in the life of your generation.
 The meaning of the shopping mall.
 Pick a sport and explain its significance to you or its
applicability to life in general (baseball, tae kwon do,
etc.)
 Talk about blogging. Many judges will be fascinated.
 Allergies as a spiritual metaphor—why our souls
reject certain toxins.
 The understated epidemic of sleep deprivation.
 Media credibility (especially in light of coverage of
the recent presidential election)
 The effect of cameras on the way we remember our
lives.
 The phenomenon of child acting—does it impact the
children negatively?
 Surrogate motherhood. Explain a few interesting legal
cases involving mothers who were paid to give birth.
 Eating disorders—this is a common one but can be
done effectively and imaginatively. Consider eating
disorders in other nations.
 Where did popular foods come from, anyhow?
 How do we learn to speak? Isn’t it a miracle?
 What does it mean to be an existentialist? An
atheist?
 Why does the space program matter?
 Female stereotypes in Disney films—for instance,
ever notice the title characters rarely have mothers?
 How danger is important in life.
 Breakfast
 Censorship—is it ever necessary?

I know this is a lot to choose from. Still, if you find something interesting take it into consideration. Hope this helps. Thanx and yup yup. hehe :D

-Rita :D