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Meeting the Audience’s Informational Needs

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Effective speakers engage their listeners because they have made the effort to understand the needs of their audience members. This is especially important in informative speaking. You want to avoid delivering a long list of facts that are already common knowledge because the object is for your audience to learn something new. Understanding your listeners’ needs also involves choosing an appropriate topic and making that topic relevant to your listeners. Let’s take a look at these points using DNA evidence as an example.

Gauge what the audience already knows. Estimating the knowledge level of the audience helps determine where to begin, how much information to share, and at what level of difficulty the audience can understand and still maintain interest. If your goal is to inform an audience of fellow students about DNA evidence, for instance, you should assume that they are not experts on your topic; only a few students may be majoring in fields that would provide them with a detailed background about it. Your tasks involve describing the procedures related to the collection of DNA evidence (such as saliva and skin cells) and explaining why the criminal justice system uses forensic DNA testing. You might even want to ask your listeners if they feel they are familiar with DNA evidence from watching shows like CSI or Bones.
Decide on an appropriate approach to the topic. Involving your listeners through the appropriate use of language and presentation aids gives them the impression that you have fine-tuned the speech for a particular group of people. You might present the story of a defendant who was convicted based on DNA evidence or of a convict who was later exonerated by it. Be sure to consider the different types of sources at your disposal: visual images, models, artifacts, fingerprints or footprints, and expert testimony. These sorts of things will captivate your audience and help them remember the new information you are teaching them.
Make the topic relevant to each member of the audience. Always specifically connect the subject to the audience by pointing out how it is pertinent and useful to your listeners’ lives. For example, you might appeal to your audience members’ personal senses of right and wrong when you share stories of elusive criminals being brought to justice with DNA evidence. Similarly, you can draw your audience members in by noting the way that such evidence can come to their aid should they ever be the victims of crime themselves.