As you prepare your informative speech, focus on clarifying and simplifying your message as much as possible. It will help your audience understand and thus retain your message.

Clarity is something you’ll want to strive for in every informative speech, no matter what your topic is or who your listeners are. If you present a message that’s confusing or use words that have vague meanings, it will be hard to connect with your audience.

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In addition to clarifying your message, your audience analysis will help you decide how much to simplify your informative speech. For example, if listeners have little knowledge of your topic and the topic is complex, simplicity will be vital. A student named Jean once gave an informative presentation on a complex experimental genetic treatment that doctors and research scientists could use to fight cancer. Her audience was made up of students in her speech class—few of whom had sufficient background to follow the technical details in her speech. Jean wisely simplified things by first narrowing the broad topic of “treatment” to the more specific term “gene therapy.” She then simplified her topic further by describing a simple three-step process for introducing genes into cells to prevent disease.

To clarify or simplify complex messages, consider the following techniques:

Move from General to Specific. Ask yourself, “At a minimum, what do I want my audience to take away from my speech? What basic message should the audience carry away?” Your answer can help you narrow a general or broad topic to a specific, simpler one—as in Jean’s speech on gene therapy.

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Reduce the Quantity of Information You Present. An informative speech may contain a tremendous amount of information for the audience to hear, process, and remember. An old adage still rings true here: “Less is more.” Look for ways to reduce the number of details you present. A speech about gene therapy could contain huge volumes of information, but Jean reduced the quantity of information she presented by reducing the details to a three-step process.

Make Complex Information Seem Familiar. You can further clarify a complex message by using definition to explain difficult-to-follow terms and ideas. You also can avoid jargon—technical or insider terminology not easily understood by people outside a certain group or field (see Chapter 12). In addition, you can draw analogies between complex ideas and things your listeners are already familiar with.8 For example, Jean could have made an analogy between gene therapy (a new concept for her audience) and a vaccine against polio (something that probably is familiar to her audience).

Use Presentation Aids. Presentation aids can help you clarify and simplify your message. For instance, a diagram of the three-step gene-therapy process that Jean described could have helped her listeners to envision the process and thus remember it. Likewise, if you are giving a speech on various bird calls, you could play a recording of a particular call instead of relying only on lengthy descriptions or demonstrations of what the call sounds like.

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Reiterate Your Message. Through reiteration, you clarify a complex message by referring to it several times, using different words each time. For example, in an informative presentation about training for a triathlon, a speaker referred three times to the importance of using a heart-rate monitor. The first time he made the point, he said, “It’s vital to use a heart-rate monitor to track your progress while you’re training.” The second time, he said, “Using a heart-rate monitor can really help you track your progress.” The third time, he said, “The more you use the monitor, the more information you’ll have on how you’re progressing.” By reiterating key points, you help your audience remember your message.

Repeat Your Message. Conveying a key point several times using the same words can also help ensure that your audience understands your message. For example, while introducing the gene-therapy process, Jean could have said something like, “This three-step process offers the best hope for treating cancer in the future.” Then, in the conclusion of her speech, she could have said, “Let me repeat: this three-step process offers the best hope for treating cancer in the future.”