Help Your Audience Remember Your Message

One measure of an informative speech’s success is whether your listeners remember it. However, a lot of things can interfere with an audience’s ability to pay attention to—and thus retain—the information you share with them. For example, listeners may get distracted by outside noise during the speech—such as a phone ringing or someone talking nearby. An overly warm or cool temperature in the room can be just as intrusive. Or listeners can simply get lost in their own thoughts or get sidetracked by other Web sites or apps, especially if they are watching your speech online. To help your audience pay attention and remember your message, try the following strategies (see Figure 16.1):

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To see how the principles and guidelines of informative speeches can come together, look over the transcript for the speech “Social Media, Social Identity, and Social Causes” by Anna Davis on pages 420–423. A video of the speech is available online at bedfordstmartins.com/choicesconnections.