1. Session 2: Understanding the Audience
ECUST—CDEN
Workshop for Debate and
Public Speaking Teachers
June 3-5, 2016
Session 2: Understanding the Audience

2. Basic Model of Communication
Speaker
Message
Audience

3. Audience Analysis
Ways of understanding your audience’s interest, knowledge, and opinions about your topic
Systematic approaches: surveys, polls, focus groups, interviews
Unsystematic approaches: brainstorming, demographics, guided questions

4. Key Questions of Audience Analysis
Questions about the Audience
What kind of people are in my audience? Younger or older? Educated or uneducated?
Questions of Knowledge
What does my audience already know about my topic? What do they still need to know in order to understand my topic?
How much experience will my audience likely have with my topic?
Questions of Interest
Is my audience likely to be uninterested or interested in my topic?

5. Key Questions of Audience Analysis
Questions of Value
What values does my audience have in relationship to my topic? How do these values inform my audience’s thinking about my topic?
Questions of Attitude
What opinions, beliefs, or attitudes might my audience already have about my topic? What will I need to do to change their mind?

6. Types of Audiences
Indifferent
Interested

7. Types of Audiences Indifferent Interested Uninformed Misinformed

8. Types of Audiences Indifferent Interested Uninformed Misinformed
Undecided
Hostile
Favorable

9. Assignment Idea: Using Surveys For Audience Analysis

10. Activity: Doing Systematic Audience Analysis
In your groups:
Imagine you are presenting an informative speech on the best practices of teaching public speaking.
Look at the audience data we drew from our survey of ECUST-CDEN workshop participants.
Discuss:
What kind of audience do you have? Uninformed or Informed? Interested or Uninterested? Or mixed? How do you know?
What kinds of messages would you include in order to appeal to this audience?
What would you avoid in your speech?

11. Activity: Doing Unsystematic Audience Analysis
How would you change your speech about best practices of teaching public speaking if your audience included:
Mathematics teachers?
Public speaking teachers with 20 years of experience?
University administrators?
Business leaders?
Tired undergraduate students who do not think public speaking is important?