Public Speaking Handbook

336 15.6 speaKinG to inForM

Consider Your Audience

As with any type of speech, an informative talk requires that you consider three

general questions of audience analysis: To whom are you speaking? What are

their interests, attitudes, beliefs, and values? What do they expect from you?

When your general purpose is to inform, you should focus on specific aspects of

these three general questions:

•   Part of considering who your audience is will include figuring out, as best

you can, their preferred learning styles.

•   Determining listeners’ interests, attitudes, beliefs, and values can help you

to balance your use of strategies to enhance understanding and recall with

your need for strategies to maintain interest. You won’t need to work as

hard to maintain the interest of listeners who are already highly interested

in your topic, for example.

•   Careful consideration of the audience’s expectations can also help you to

maintain their interest, perhaps by surprising listeners with something they

do not expect.

CONSIDER

THE

AUDIENCE

Deliver

Speech

Generate

Main

Ideas

Develop

Central

Idea

Gather

Supporting

Material

Select

and Narrow

Topic

Rehearse

Speech

Determine

Purpose

Organize

Speech

Figure 15.1 You can follow the steps of the audience-

centered model of public speaking to craft a successful

informative speech.

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