Strengthening Audience Memory

An important goal of any speech is to make a lasting impression on your audience. If listeners applaud your presentation but a week later can remember hardly anything you said, your speech will have limited effect. To help audience members remember your presentation, you need to give them “hooks” that aid in the process. How does this work? A comparison to the fastener Velcro can be used. Velcro contains tiny hooks on one side and loops on the other; when the sides are compressed, many of the hooks are caught in the loops, and they become attached.2 Now imagine that a human brain has many millions of loops; the more hooks you can provide for an idea, the better the chance that an idea will “stick” in the minds of your audience members.3

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Supporting materials provide hooks for the ideas you present. If you merely tell the audience that the Inca culture used groups of strings and knots called khipu (key-poo) to keep records,4 listeners may quickly forget what khipu are and how they were used. But suppose you follow up on that statement by showing the audience the word and having them pronounce it with you. Next, you explain that khipu means “knot” in the Inca language and that the strings are made from cotton or alpaca wool. Finally, you show a picture of a khipu and explain how the knots are positioned to store information. Now you have given the audience several hooks to help them remember what khipu are and how they were used.