Effective Speaking-2
Effective Speaking-2*
2. Understanding Your Audience and Adapt To It
Once you have a clear speech goal, you begin the task of understanding your specific audience and how to adapt your speech to it. Audience adaptation is the process of tailoring your speech’s information to the needs, interests and expectations of your listeners. As you prepare for your speech, you will consider your specific audience’s needs and seek to meet these needs continually as you develop your ideas.
For any speech, it is important to consider the audience’s initial level of interest in your goal their ability to understand the content of the speech, and their attitude toward you and your topic.
If you believe your audience has very little interest in your speech topic, you will need to adapt to them so that they understand why the topic is important. For instance, if Ling is talking with an audience that she believes has very little interest in understanding Ming porcelain, she may pique their interest by recounting how someone took an old vase to the Antiques Road Show TV program and discovered that it was the Ming period and worth € 10,000!
Not only will you need to adapt your speech by piquing audience interest, but if you believe that your audience doesn’t know much about your topic, you will want to provide the basic information they need to understand your speech. For instance, if Ling is speaking to an audience that is unfamiliar with porcelain, she may need to explain briefly how porcelain is made and how it differs from orther pottery before they will be able to understand how to identify Ming era vases.
Finally, you will need to adapt to your audience’s initial attitudes toward your topic. If Kelly has chosen to speak on repealing the death penalty, she will need to understand where her audience stands on this topic before she begins. If the majority of her audience is pro-death penalty, then as she prepares she will adapt by selecting arguments and evidence that can be accepted by the audience.
3. Gather and Evaluate Information to Use in the Speech
For most of your speeches, you will need additional information from research sources. You will also want to use some humorous, exciting, or interesting experiences and stories to illustrate your points. When you select a topic, although you already know something about it, you will usually need more information that you can get from printed or interview sources. Regardless of the sources of your information, you will need to evaluate the information you gather and select the items you deem valid and truthful. The more you know about your topic, the easier it is to evaluate the information you uncover in your research. Nora, who ia a member of the local volunteer Life Squad, will be able to give a better speech on CPR than a person with no practical experience who has learned about CPR from reading and interviewing others. Why? Because in the course of her volunteer work, Nora has actually used this skill and has real experiences to draw from.
For your major class assignments, you may draw on material from your own knowledge and experiences, observations, surveys, and research.
4. Organize and Develop Ideas Into a well-Structured Speech Outline
You begin the process of organizing your speech by identifying the three or four major ideas you want your audience to remember. If the audience understands and remembers these main points, you will have achieved your speech goal. These main points are written in full sentences. Once you have identified these key ideas, you will combine them with your speech goal into a succinct thesis statement that describes specifically what you want your audience to understand when you have finished speaking. This process provides the initial framework, or macrostructure of your speech.
Main points must be carefully worded, and then they must be arranged in an organizational pattern that helps the audience understand and remember them. Two of the most basic organizational patterns are In some circumstances, you may find that your speech is best presented topically. Topical means following an order of headings. For instance, Ling, who decides to inform her audience about the three characteristics that distinguish Ming vases from others, might choose to talk about the characteristics in ascending order with the most important characteristic last.
Having identified, phrased, and ordered the main points, you are now ready to outline the body of the speech. Although it is temping to work out a speech as it comes to mind, speeches are not essays, and you will be more effective if you prepare a thorough outline.
After you have outlined the body of the speech, which includes noting elaborations, you can outline your introduction and conclusion. Your introduction should both get attention and lead into the body of the speech. Because there are never any guarantees that your audience is ready to pay full attention to the speech, an effective introduction draws the audience into what you are saying.
In your conclusion, you will want to remind the audience of your main points and speech goal. You should do this in a creative way that helps the audience remember.
When you think you are finished, review the outline to make sure that the parts are relevant to your goal. A written outline allows you to test the logic and clarity of your proposed organization. The length of your outline will depend on the length of your speech. In a speech of three to five minutes, the outline may contain up to 50 percent or more of the words in the speech; for a five-to-eight minte sppeech, up to 33 to 50 percent. And in speeches given in public later in life (often thirty to fourty-five minutes), the speech outline may contain as few as 20 percent of the words.
Although an expert who has spoken frequently on a topic may be able to speak effectively from a mental outline or a few notes, most of us benefit from the discipline of organizing and developing a complete speech outline.**
* R. Verderber, K. Verderber, D. D. Sellnow. Effective Speaking. ISBN: 0-495-503348-7
Learn more about effective speaking! Visit site: **http://web.me.com/beniers/Effective_Speaking-2/Film.html
Prof. C.J.M. Beniers
NL Zoetermeer
16-10-2010
© Copyright 2010
About Professor C.J.M. Beniers
Prof. C.J.M. Beniers is a well known authority in the field of modern and international communication techniques. He developed the Six-Component-Model. This model enables companies, institutions and politicians to communicate and negotiate with counterparts from all over the world successfully. His career began as international manager at Philips and later he earned his doctorate as professor in communication. He has more than 35 years experience as manager and management trainer. Thus he knows both sides – theory and praxis – very well. As scientist, Prof. Beniers conducts frequently research in the field of intercultural communication. The results of his interesting research can be found in news articles, free pod casts, audio books and his E-books such as “Bridging The Cultural Gap.” Here, modern managers learn how to prepare for business meetings with people from different cultures; they acquire the techniques and tools to handle situations in times of crises successfully, master intercultural barriers, country-specific communication patterns, looking into personal cultural values & systems. Knowing all this, men can prevent cultural misunderstandings and misinterpretations – not only in business but also in private life.
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