Quiz 04 v3 - Considering the Audience

Hua will be presenting before a community group on school safety. What should be her first step?

• Finding out about the audience and the event
• Writing the speech
• Researching the speech

After being invited to speak at ScienceCon, Ahman spends several days preparing a highly technical speech on nanotube construction methods. When he arrives at ScienceCon, he discovers that it is a science education event for children grades 1-3. What should he have done differently?

• He should have written a speech that could be understood by any age level.
• He should have refused the invitation to speak at ScienceCon.
• He should have asked questions about the audience and the event.

In class, Lana gives a speech calling for the elimination of football at her university. She has carefully examined public records of the university's budget, and argues that football costs the school four or five times more than it brings in, and rarely sees much success on the playing field. Meanwhile, university leadership has just announced significant cuts to academic programs. Lana gives her speech, and the class seems completely confused. One student says: "Eliminate football? Now? You must be nuts!" It turns out that it was just announced that the team earned a spot in a nationally televised bowl game, and the whole town seems to be celebrating this morning. What has Lana failed to consider?

• The location of her speech. Lana should have given her speech off campus, where she would have received a more enthusiastic response.
• The timing of her speech. If she had acknowledged the announcement, she could have spoken to the excitement of her classmates while still making her argument.
• The demographics of her audience.

In audience analysis, three methods used to gather information before you speak are:

• Interviewing attendees, physical feedback, and post-presentation surveys
• Observation, inference, and data collection (surveys)
• Visual observation, physical feedback, and non-verbal communication

Audience analysis is the process of gathering information about an expected audience, used to help a public speaker adapt the content of a speech. How do demographic and inference data differ in regards to audience analysis?

• Demographics and inferences are synonyms. They both mean the same thing.
• Demographic data is information about characteristics of a population whereas inferences are a type of “educated guess” made from observations or research.
• Demographics are subjective information about a group or population whereas inferences are a type of data collected from unbiased sources.

Kahlil was invited to lead a workshop on photography with an afterschool youth program. The organizer of the event tells him: "they're great kids! They get distracted easily, though, so it's good to keep things moving. I think all of them know how to use a camera already." What kind of audience information is this?

• Survey results
• Second-hand observation
• First-hand observation

Which of the following is NOT usually collected as demographic data?

• Race or ethnicity
• Highest educational level reached
• Occupational goals

Alejandra is preparing a grant application as part of her job for an organization that runs a career-readiness program. As part of the application, the grant funder wants to know demographic information about the program's participants. What kind of information would be included in this part of the application?

• Which jobs the participants were able to get after completing the program.
• Job and life goals of the program's participants.
• Racial groups represented by the participants, age range of the participants, and level of educational attainment.

Amal, who is majoring in philosophy, is giving a speech to his class about why philosophy isn't a waste of time. He has the class fill out a survey and finds out that many of his classmates are majoring in business and marketing. How might this information shape the organization of his speech?

• He can use philosophical argumentation to prove to his classmates that the business world is immoral unless one has a philosophical viewpoint.
• He can start with the questions one might encounter in the business world, then show how philosophy can help resolve these questions.
• He can ignore this information and focus on the fact that they're all there for the same reason: to learn public speaking.

Hamid will be leading a workshop on creative problem solving and thinking outside the box. From a pre-workshop survey, he learns that half of the participants in the workshop grew up outside the United States. How might he use this information to prepare his presentation?

• He should speak especially slowly and loudly, because half of his audience probably won't understand him.
• He should assume that these participants are better at thinking outside the box than the U.S.-born participants and give them more challenging tasks.
• He could invite participants to draw from their experience to think about cultural differences in approaching common tasks, like how to get groceries.