Table Topics Tip #4: Answering the Question

A lot of table topics are either questions or they ask for your opinion on a topic, for instance “War is bad, explain.”

There are many ways to answer such a topic but there are also a lot of questions to ask – why is war bad? is war bad? do I want to be serious or funny? Why, today of all days, did I wear this tie?

Yes, your mind can be overwhelmed and easily distracted by a table topic but here are three simple ways to help you out of this problem:

1. Make a decision
2. Answer part of the question
3. Answer both sides of the question

Make a decision

Do you agree or disagree with the question? Decide one way or the other and make a declaration – “I agree wholeheartedly”. This makes you look strong and decisive. It also makes it easier for you, you’ve got a clear direction to go, all you need to do now is explain why you made this decision.

Next, continue this by stating, “There are 3 things that come to mind about this topic” – You may not have 3 things immediately in mind but saying this gives an automatic structure to your speech. This allows you to appear knowledgeable and gives you a little bit of time to get your ideas in order.  You only need to have your first point and as you talk new ideas will pop into your head and you can use these to give your speech the actual structure that you pretended to have when you began.

Answer part of the question

Table Topics questions can be pretty horrible, but once you’re up on stage you have the freedom to answer the question whichever way you like, to interpret the question your way. So if you don’t think you can answer the question that was asked perhaps you can answer part of the question…

For instance if the question is “describe how the global macroeconomic policy contributes to the decay of  the world environmental balance” (and hopefully it’s quite unlikely that you get such an awful question), then what you need to do to stay sane is to examine the question to see if there’s anything to work with, something you can talk about, for instance macro-economics, grab hold of that word with all your strength and run with it – “Talking about macro-economics is all well and good but what we need to do is look at is micro-economics, or to be more precise, my economics, the factors that caused me to buy this terrible suit  or to wear this tie with those shoes….”

The trick is to twist a horrible question in such a way that you can talk about whatever you want, another by-passing method is to change the topic completely with a phrase like “this reminds me of a story my grandmother used to tell me…”

Remember – if one element of a topic inspires you, but you want to discard the rest of the question, go ahead. Acknowledge the original query, then focus on the area that you want to pursue.

Answering both sides of the question

Back to the “war is bad” example, instead of making a decision right away, wait.

After all, by making an snap decision you eliminate 50% of the possible things you could discuss on the topic so don’t make up your mind immediately instead start with “This is a multi-faceted issue and we first need to examine the pros and cons before we can reach a conclusion”. You are now free to argue both sides of the question, giving you twice as much to talk about!

Here again you’ve got an instant structure, your speech now will have two sections, the pros and the cons, and once you’ve finished outlining them, you can make your decision and in the conclusion you state your decision “after careful consideration of the pros and cons, I think both you and I can agree that war is bad”

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Tackling Table Topics is all about taking control, making decisions and above all, talking.

So stand up there and talk!

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