To give effective oral presentations, you need to assess your audience and your purpose. Even for an impromptu presentation, you should take a few moments to think about why and to whom you are speaking. To assess your audience, ask the same questions you would ask about readers: Why are the members of my audience here? What do they already know about my subject? How do they feel about my topic? What objections might they have to my argument?

Define your purpose by completing the following statement:

For instance, you may want to speculate on the causes of companies’ hiring part-time instead of full-time workers, or you may want to argue your position on the ethics of this new hiring policy.