Lets You Know How Your Message Is Being Received by Your Audience.

The Benefits of Understanding Your Audition

The more you know and understand about the background and needs of your audience, the better you can ready your oral communication.

Learning Objectives

Explain why it is important to understand your audience prior to delivering a speech

Cardinal Takeaways

Cardinal Points

• Knowing your audience —their general historic period, gender, education level, religion, language, civilization, and group membership—is the single most important aspect of developing your speech.
• Analyzing your audience will assist you discover information that you tin can utilize to build mutual ground between you and the members of your audience.
• A fundamental characteristic in public speaking situations is the unequal distribution of speaking fourth dimension betwixt the speaker and the audition. This means that the speaker talks more than and the audience listens, oft without request questions or responding with any feedback.

Central Terms

• audience: One or more than people inside hearing range of some message; for case, a group of people listening to a performance or speech; the crowd attending a stage performance.
• audience analysis: A study of the pertinent elements defining the makeup and characteristics of an  audience.
• Audition-centered: Tailored to an audience. When preparing a message, the speaker analyzes the audition in social club to conform the content and language usage to the level of the listeners.

Benefits of Agreement Audiences

When you are speaking, you want listeners to understand and respond favorably to what you are proverb. An audience is one or more people who come together to listen to the speaker. Audition members may be face to confront with the speaker or they may be connected by communication technology such as computers or other media. The audience may be pocket-sized and private or it may be large and public. A cardinal characteristic of public speaking situations is the unequal distribution of speaking time between speaker and audition. As an case, the speaker usually talks more while the audition listens, oft without asking questions or responding with whatever feedback. In some situations, the audience may inquire questions or respond overtly by clapping or making comments.

Agreement the Audience: Information technology'south important to understand the audience and generate a clear message before giving a speech.

Audition-Centered Approach to Speaking

Since in that location is usually limited communication between the speaker and the audition, there is limited opportunity to get back to explain your pregnant either during the speech or after. When planning a speech, it is important to know nearly the audience and to adapt the bulletin to the audience. You want to gear up an audience-centered oral communication, a speech communication with a focus on the audience.

In public speaking, you are speaking to and for your audience; thus, understanding the audience is a major part of the speech-making process. In audition-centered speaking, getting to know your target audience is one of the most important tasks that you face. You desire to learn nigh the major demographics of the audience, such as full general age, gender, teaching, religion, and culture, too as to what groups the audience members belong. Additionally, learning about the values, attitudes, and beliefs of the members of your audition will allow you to conceptualize and plan your bulletin.

Finding Mutual Ground past Taking Perspective

You desire to analyze your audience prior to your speech so that during the spoken communication you can create a link between you, the speaker, and the audience. Yous want to be able to figuratively pace inside the minds of audience members to understand the world from their perspectives. Through this process, you can find common ground with your audience, which allows you lot to align your message with what the audience already knows or believes.

Gathering and Interpreting Information

Audition analysis involves gathering and interpreting information about the recipients of oral, written, or visual communication. There are very simple methods for conducting an audience analysis, such as interviewing a small group about its knowledge or attitudes or using more than involved methods of analyzing demographic studies of relevant segments of the population. You lot may too find it useful to look at sociological studies of different historic period groups or cultural groups. You might too use a questionnaire or rating scale to collect data most the basic demographic information and opinions of your target audition. These examples do non form an all-inclusive listing of methods to analyze your audience, but they can help you obtain a general agreement of how you can learn about your audition. Later considering all the known factors, a profile of the intended audition tin be created, assuasive you to speak in a manner that is understood by the intended audience.

Practical Benefits for the Speaker

Understanding who makes up your target audience will permit y'all to carefully plan your message and adapt what yous say to the level of understanding and groundwork of the listeners. 2 practical benefits of conducting an audition analysis are (1) to prevent you from saying the wrong affair, such every bit telling a joke which offends, and (2) to assist you speak to your audience in a language they understand nigh things that involvement them. Your speech volition be more than successful if you can create a message that informs and engages your audience.

What to Look For

Analyze the audience to find the mix of ages, genders, sexual orientations, educational levels, religions, cultures, ethnicities, and races.

Learning Objectives

Examine your audition based on demographics

Central Takeaways

Key Points

• A speaker should wait at his or her own values, beliefs, attitudes, and biases that may influence his or her perception of others.
• Guard confronting egocentrism. A speaker must not regard his or her own opinions or interests as existence the virtually important or valid.
• Look at others to understand their background, attitudes, and beliefs.
• Focus on audience demographics such as historic period, gender, sexual orientation, education, religion, and other relevant population characteristics to analyze the audition.
• The depth of the audience analysis depends of the size of the intended audience and the method of delivery.

Key Terms

• egocentrism: Preoccupation with one'due south own internal world; the conventionalities that i's own opinions or interests are the most important or valid.
• demographics: The characteristics of population such equally age, gender, sexual orientation, occupation, education; classification of the characteristics of the people.

Look Inward to Uncover Blinders

A public speaker should turn her mental magnifying glass inward to examine the values, beliefs, attitudes, and biases that may influence her perception of others. The speaker should use this mental moving-picture show to wait at the audience and view the world from the audience'southward perspective. By looking at the audition, the speaker understands their reality.

Magnifying Glass: Speakers should use a metaphorical magnifying glass to examine their values, behavior, and attitudes.

When the speaker views the audience only through her mental perception, she is likely to appoint in egocentrism. Egocentrism is characterized past the preoccupation with 1's own internal globe. Egocentrics regard themselves and their ain opinions or interests as being the nearly important or valid. Egocentric people are unable to fully understand or cope with other people'southward opinions and a reality that is unlike from what they are ready to accept.

Understanding Audience Groundwork, Attitudes, and Beliefs

Public speakers must look at who their audience is, their groundwork, attitudes, and beliefs. The speaker should attempt to reach the most authentic and effective assay of her audience inside a reasonable amount of fourth dimension. For instance, speakers tin appraise the demographics of her audience. Demographics are detailed accounts of human population characteristics and usually rendered as statistical population segments.

For an assay of audience demographics for a speech, focus on the same characteristics studied in sociology. Audiences and populations comprise groups of people represented by different age groups that:

• Are of the aforementioned or mixed genders
• Have experienced the same events
• Accept the same or different sexual orientation
• Have dissimilar educational attainment
• Participate in different religions
• Represent different cultures, ethnicities, or races

Speakers assess the audience'due south attitude – a positive or negative evaluation of people, objects, event, activities, or ideas – toward a specific topic or purpose. The attitudes of the audience may vary from extremely negative to extremely positive, or completely clashing. By examining the preexisting beliefs of the audience regarding the spoken communication's general topic or particular purpose, speakers have the ability to persuade the audience members to purchase into the speaker's argument. This can also help with speech preparation.

Tips for the Speaker

The depth of the audience analysis depends of the size of the intended audience and method of commitment. Speakers apply different methods to become familiar with the background, attitudes, and beliefs of audiences in unlike environments and using various mediums (e.g., videoconferencing, telephone, etc). For a small audience, the speaker can simply speak with them in a physical environs. However, the speaker is addressing a larger audience or speaking via teleconferencing or webcasting tools, it may exist useful to collect data via surveys or questionnaires.

What to Do with Your Knowledge

Use noesis almost your audience to step into their minds, create an imaginary scenario, and exam your ideas.

Learning Objectives

Identify with your audition by adopting their perspective

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• A successful speaker is able to stride outside her own perceptual framework to sympathize the world as it is perceived past members of her audience.
• The speaker engages in a procedure of first encoding his or her ideas from thoughts into words, then forming a message to exist delivered to a group of listeners, or audience. The audience members try to decode what the speaker is saying so that they tin sympathise it.
• The better the speaker knows the members of the audience beforehand, the ameliorate the speaker tin encode a message in a fashion that the audience can decode successfully.
• One of the most useful strategies for adapting your topic and bulletin to your audition is to use the process of identification to find common ground with them.
• You tin can use your analysis to create a theoretical, imagined audience of individuals from the diverse backgrounds you have discovered in your audience analysis. Then you can decide whether or non the content will appeal to individuals within that audience.

Key Terms

• encode: to turn one'southward ideas into spoken linguistic communication in order to transmit them to listeners
• message: the verbal and nonverbal components of linguistic communication, sent to the receiver past the sender, that convey an idea
• Decode: to translate the sender's spoken idea/message into something the receiver understands by using his or her noesis of linguistic communication based on personal experience

Identifying with the listeners

Step in to the minds of your listeners and see if you can identify with them. A successful speaker engages in perspective-taking. While preparing her speech, the speaker steps outside her own perceptual framework to understand the world as information technology is perceived by members of the audience. When the speaker takes an audition-centered arroyo to speech training, she focuses on the audience and how information technology will respond to what is existence said. In essence, the speaker wants to mentally adopt the perspective of members of the audition in gild to run into the globe every bit the audience members come across it.

Encoding and Decoding

The speaker engages a process of encoding his or her ideas from thoughts into words, and of forming a message which is then delivered to an audience. The audience members then attempt to decode what the speaker is maxim then that they can understand it. To improve imagine this process, consider the example of encoding and decoding every bit it applies to the idea of a tree. I know that my audience is in New England and that they are familiar with oak trees. I employ the give-and-take tree to encode my idea, and because my audience has experienced similar trees, they decode the word tree in the way that I intended. However, I may be thinking about a tree (a palm tree) that is in Hawaii, where I used to alive, when I use the word tree to encode my thought. Unfortunately, when my audience decodes my word now, they are nevertheless thinking about the oak tree and will not see my palm tree. The audition no longer shares my perspective of the earth or my feel with copse.

Encoding Communication: One speaker encodes a message and sends the message. The listener hears the message and decodes it.

Finding Common Ground

The more you observe out about your audition, the more than yous can adapt your bulletin to the interests, values, beliefs, and language level of the audience. One time you collect data most your audience, you are ready to summarize your findings and select the language and structure that is best suited to your particular audience. You are on a journey to detect common ground in guild to identify with your audition. One of the most useful strategies for adapting your topic and bulletin to your audience is to use the process of identification. What practice you and your audience have in mutual? And, conversely, how are you different? What ideas or examples in your oral communication can your audience place with?

Creating a Theoretical, Imagined Audition

Create a theoretical, imagined situation to test your view of an audition for practice. Y'all can utilise your assay to create what is called a "theoretical, universal audience. " The universal audience is an imagined audience that serves as a test for the speaker. Imagine in your listen a blended audition that contains individuals from the diverse backgrounds yous have discovered in your audience assay. Adjacent, decide whether or not the content of your speech would appeal to individuals within that audience. What words or examples will the audience empathise and what will they not sympathize? What terms virtually your subject area volition you demand to ascertain or explain for this audition? How different are the values and opinions you want your audience to take from the present attitudes and beliefs they may hold?

Tips for the Speaker

In summary, use your knowledge of the audience to adapt your speech accordingly. Adopt the perspective of the audience in order to place with them, and test out your ideas with an imagined audience equanimous of people with the groundwork you lot have discovered through your research.

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Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-communications/chapter/the-importance-of-audience-analysis/