Thinking back of a time when I was in the audience and the speaker was not able to connect with the audience, I could not tell you what the presentation was about. I remember being there but since he never connected with us I don’t remember what he said. For this reason, it is very important that you connect with your audience so that they remember what you were trying to convey to them. Also during the presentation you lose focus and start to talk with your or do other things that may become distracting to others. In return that might keep someone else from being able to listen to what the presenter had to say so it starts a downward spiral.
As a speaker there are a few things that I believe you need to do so that you are able to connect with your audience. First, while you are writing the speech you should know the type of audience that you will be speaking to, and the education level of the audience. The reason why you need to know this is so that you tailor your speech to them. For example, if you are speaking to a group of 3rd graders you will not use all the technical terms that you would use if you were speaking to a group of dentists.
Another thing you need to do is while you are speaking make sure you add emphasis, and make your nonverbal components evident. You want to hold the audience’s attention during your speech and one way to do this is add in a couple stories. Or you could use audience participation to help keep your audience entertained and keep them interested in what you are talking about. Something that helps this is you need to pick a topic that you are interested in so that you can show enthusiasm. But you also need to pick a topic that your audience has some interest in so that they will listen to you.
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I can also think of a time that I listened to a speaker and had no idea what they spoke about. I was in middle school and a woman was apparently presenting a new way of studying to us. However, we could not relate because she was talking way over our heads. She used big words and had a powerpoint presentation that was really confusing. I completely agree with you that when an audience can't relate, they tend to get distracted and distract others. I agree that as a speaker it is important to grab your audience from the beginning and keep them interested until the end. You gave some great examples of ways a speaker could accomplish that. Audience participation is great because you can see if your audience really understands what you are talking about. Audiences come in all shapes and sizes and a speaker should try hard to relate to them if they want to be effective.
ReplyDeleteWhat sorts of things will you need to keep in mind in order to adapt your speeches to the audience that is our class? What can you specifically do in order to make sure your speeches apply to them? What do you need to keep in mind?
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