Descriptive Speech

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Written By Jim Peterson

Jim Peterson has over 20 years experience on speech writing. He wrote over 300 free speech topic ideas and how-to guides for any kind of public speaking and speech writing assignments at My Speech Class.

Descriptive Speech Tips

Descriptive speech topic list for a public speaking PowerPoint speech presentation plus deliver help with the top ten tips.

The goal of descriptive public speaking is to narrate about an object, event or phenomenon in a way the audience is able to visualize the image that is portrayed by the public speaker.descriptive speech

Your emotions and feelings are the core leading ladies when you prepare. First write down all thoughts, memories and rough ideas. All the things that pop and come up first when you think about a certain candidate speech idea. Let’s say you want to create a descriptive speech topic about a tall building you have visited, for example the Menara Kuala Lumpur Tower in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The first things that pop up talking about that mega structure are:

  • The height of the building in yards or meters;
  • The ingenious type of construction;
  • The huge pedestrian mall with cascading pools;
  • The almost unlimited number of levels and elevators;
  • What you see, what you hear and feel when you approach the mighty building:
  • The magnificent colors;
  • The lights at night;
  • The general noises;
  • The environment;
  • How you experienced the guiding tour;
  • The fear of heights, and so on.

Yes, you are right, I have been there. In other words, allow for a free play of facts, feelings and emotions, that is the essence of speech writing on a descriptive speech topic. After the inventory do outline the facts in a text to speech and a few slides.

Use imagery and figurative figures of speech; words and terms that denote all impressions and represent the object or process being described are important.

But there are more public speaking strategies you can use, for example mix these in your speech topics outline:

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a. Adjectives, verbs and metaphors.

b. Sensory features of a subject or device.

c. Comparisons between two things.

d. Evolution in time.

e. Statistical data and bare facts.

f. Newly discovered information.

g. Details and easy to oversee things that could be important to know.

h. Personal experiences and memories you could share and people can learn from.

Here are fifteen sample descriptive speech topics for persuasive or informative purposes.

Describe:

  1. How you experienced a typhoon or any other natural disaster.
  2. Your little baby brother’s first steps – the process of walking.
  3. How an airplane is prepared for take off – imagine we are in the cockpit.
  4. The movie theatre you attended recently – mention the movie-going experience from the moment to enter the building, the devices used, the big screen, the seats, the decoration, et cetera.
  5. How you negotiate and bought a car for a discount price.
  6. Your most memorable birthday party.
  7. Your favorite exercise gym.
  8. The home you lived in in your childhood.
  9. The nightlife in your favorite town.
  10. How you have found and developed a description idea…
  11. A place you like to show your audience and why.
  12. The short cut from your educational institution to the local supermarket.
  13. The most beautiful view of a hotel room during vacation.
  14. A sports event you will never forget.
  15. An object you never give away.

This descriptive speech topic list is just to accelerate and stimulate your start up. Pick some ideas and write down suggestions and things that may strike you. Give yourself a boost!

PowerPoint Speech Tips

May people use PowerPoint slides to enhance understanding on their descriptive speech topic. My ten easy PowerPoint speech help tips:

  1. Begin each slide with a headline sentence, not just a conversation phrase.
  2. Use short, directing sentences.
  3. Use no more than 8 words per line, and 8 lines per image for projection.
  4. Use large fonts and a simple layout for easy reading.
  5. Be careful with the data density of the descriptive public speaking topics.
  6. Choose images and colors carefully.
  7. Can you read it easily yourself when you stand behind a desk as public speaker? You do not have to stretch your neck in an odd position?
  8. Can the audience in the rear rows and the corners of the room see all slides?
  9. Is the projector focused and aligned properly?
  10. Have you darkened the room enough in a way everyone will see clearly your slides?

Print this handy top 10 public speaking PowerPoint speech advices, use it as a little secret table topics help paper when you are preparing and delivering in class or other speaking arrangement.

Topics on Places

Descriptive speech topics for students and Toastmaster International public speakers who struggle with finding descriptive writing topics. These places on earth are sometimes a slightly unknown and uncommon for holiday trips. Describe them with compelling facts while speechwriting:

  • History
  • Colonization – if appropriate
  • Independency conflicts and wars
  • Geography
  • Government and political parties
  • Military
  • Foreign relations
  • Official languages
  • Currency, Demographics and population
  • Media, arts and culture
  • Flags and symbols
  • National traditions
  • Sports events
  • Nature and climate

I start this list of descriptive speech topics on places, countries and islands with the southeastern European Balkan country Bosnia and Herzegovina at the Adriatic Sea and bordering Croatia.

  1. The southern African Comoros group of atolls, keys and barrier reefs in the Indian Ocean, actually to be more precise: in the Mozambique Channel.
  2. The subtropical Florida Everglades in the Southern state of Florida, bordering the Gulf of Mexico. Plenty of things to tell.
  3. The Middle East coastal Gaza Strip between Egypt and Israel, ruled by the Palestinian National Authority. Egypt, also a good source for descriptive speech topics on places – ad than I mean the past and present: the ancient era is often chosen, but do you agree that the last years there is so much change there that you could wrapping up that turbulent period too?
  4. The special administrative region of Hong Kong in the South China Sea, of the People’s Republic of China. The changes in the contemporary history are good groundwork.
  5. The Greater Antilles of Jamaica in the Caribbean Sea, northeast of Central America and south of Cuba. Spellbinding cultural spots on the maps. What is the distinctness between this archipelago and the Royal Netherlands Antilles?
  6. Landlocked between the Alp countries Austria and Switzerland in Europe: the alpine mini-state Liechtenstein in Central Europe.
  7. The Marshall of Micronesia in the western Pacific Ocean.
  8. The hundreds of isles forming the Federated States of Micronesia in the North Pacific Ocean. Have you ever been there?
  9. The constitutional monarchy of the Netherlands in western Europe, located at the North Sea, between Belgium and Germany.
  10. The Western African SГЈo TomГ© and Principe islands in the Gulf of Guinea, west of Gabon’s coast.
  11. The Slovak Republic in Central Europe, south of Poland, east of the Czech Republic and Austria, west to Ukraine and north to Hungary. Formerly it was called Czech-Slovakia, what happened, and when and why?
  12. The archipelago of the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific Ocean, east of Papua New Guinea.
  13. The Southern African Kingdom of Swaziland, in between Mozambique and South Africa.
  14. The Republic of Vanuatu in the South Pacific Ocean, near from Hawaii and Australia.
  15. The landlocked Vatican City state in of Rome, Italy, governed by the Pope. By the way, you know, the reign of the Holy Father and his Roman Catholic Church could also be seen as descriptive speech topics for a talk. Let your imagination flow …
  16. The Palestinian Middle East West Bank territory east to Israel.
  17. The Western Sahara in Northern Africa, between Mauritania and Morocco.
  18. Middle East Yemen in the tip of the Arabian Peninsula along the Arabian Sea, Gulf of Aden, and Red Sea.
  19. The Southern African nation of Zambia, west to Angola, south to Congo, west to Malawi.

Of course, only if you can find interesting ideas for speechwriting based on the hints I gave on top of this page, it’s worth to develop and elaborate on these examples of descriptive speech topics.

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