Chapter 12: Preparing and Researching Presentations

Anticipating Your Audience’s Response

As speech instructors, we openly confess that we get tired of hearing speeches on gun control, abortion, and euthanasia. These topics are surely worthy of thoughtful public discourse, but we’ve heard the same arguments over and over, and we’re interested in learning about new topics. All audience members feel this way from time to time. You may be required to attend meetings at work that have nothing to do with your projects or your job; you may sit through a sermon at your house of worship that feels unrelated to your life experiences. When you are the speaker, it’s always useful to remember these experiences and to do your best to ensure that you don’t cause your audience to react the same way! Considering a few practical points, and adapting your speech accordingly, can certainly help:

Consider audience motivation. Is your audience choosing to listen to your speech or are they required to attend? Voluntary audiences tend to be motivated to listen because they have chosen to hear what you say. The audience members in your class, however, are usually required to listen—and some of them may be entirely unmotivated to do so. Therefore, you must work to choose a relevant, engaging topic that they will care about and to engage them with your delivery skills (a topic we’ll address in Chapter 14).
Seek common ground. Do you and your audience members share certain opinions or experiences with one another? If so, you can capitalize on this homogeny—or sameness—by delivering a message that will keep their attention. For example, when his university changed its taxation policies for graduate students receiving stipends, Eduardo delivered a presentation informing his fellow students of the steps they would need to take to ensure proper tax withholding. It didn’t matter that the students hailed from assorted fields and departments because they were all stuck dealing with the same confusing tax questions.
Determine prior exposure. Audience members’ interest in your speech may differ greatly depending on whether or not they have previously been exposed to your ideas and arguments. Having a general sense of what they know about the topic—and how they have reacted to it in the past—will help you prepare. For example, if your informative speech on the Paleo diet went over well with your classmates, then it’s reasonable to think that they might be interested in hearing a persuasive speech on the health and financial benefits of a diet with fewer dairy products.
Consider disposition. As noted earlier, your audience’s preexisting attitudes toward a particular message—or even toward you as a speaker—can have an impact on how they receive your speech. If you are a company executive informing employees that they will not be receiving an annual pay raise, you can assume your audience will be angry with the message (and may well dislike you as a speaker). You would be well advised to focus on areas of agreement, seek common ground, and attempt mutual understanding rather than sweeping changes in attitudes. (We will address how to adjust your speech to receptive, hostile, and neutral audiences in Chapter 16).

As was the case on gathering demographic and psychographic information on your audience members, you may wonder exactly how you go about finding information to anticipate your audience’s reaction to your speech. Luckily, there are a few steps you can take that may yield incredibly helpful information.

Observe people. People-watching is a hobby for some but a must for speakers! You can learn a lot by casually observing those around you. How do they react to topics discussed in class—particularly if the topics are controversial? What types of speakers do they seem to respond to?
Get to know people. This may seem like common sense, but you’d be surprised how often students complete a course without making personal connections. Talk to a few people who sit next to you in class or engage with discussion forums in your virtual course. Ask questions. Learn more about your classmates’ hobbies, life situations, and other factors that might help you develop an effective speech.

When surveying and interviewing your audience to help anticipate their response to your speech, it’s important to develop the most useful questions possible. For example, you’ll want to consider whether to ask open, closed, or bipolar questions to get the information you need. And you’ll want to avoid unethical directed, leading, and loaded questions. See the Interviewing Appendix for more information.
Survey and interview your audience. You might also want to assess your audience on a more formal level. After receiving approval from your instructor, you might develop and distribute a short questionnaire to determine your classmates’ opinions on a topic you’re considering for your speech. Or you might talk with several members of a student organization to get feedback on your topic before you deliver your speech at the next group meeting.
Use the Web. Do a Web search for opinion polls on your topic, especially polls that gauge the views of college students or other key demographic groups in your audience. Examine the kind of attention the issue has been getting on campus or in the local media (such as the school’s newspaper or Web site).

All of the information you gain about your audience members—from their expectations and situational constraints to their demographics and possible reactions—sets the stage for you to move forward in developing an effective and appropriate speech. The next step is choosing your topic.