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The art of public speaking

The speech making process

Speech making is a process that involves various stages which includes  Selecting and narrowing the topic selection. One should always see every subject in the speech through the eyes of your audience.  It  is important  to  tailor  every  topic  to  suit  your  particular  audience.  This should be reflected in the topic wording, among other things. Use the following criteria:

Apparent worth –Is it important to you and to your audience?

Appropriateness– does it fit your personal interests, the audience, and the occasion

Availability of material  – do not deliver a speech you are not well conversant with or the one you only have limited knowledge about                    

Sometimes the topic is prescribed, but on a number of occasions, you will need to come up with your own.   A good topic requires that you consider the audience, the purpose of your speech, and the speech situation, because these factors influence the success of your presentation.

so the speech making process involves:

Selecting and narrowing the topic

Speech preparation should be done in an informed and systematic way otherwise it may turn out to be irrelevant to the audience and damage reputation of the speaker. sound speech preparation is an important ingredient of good speaking skills.

i. Analyse your audience

Audience analysis is the process of gathering information about the people in your audience so that you can understand their needs, expectations, beliefs, values, attitudes, and likely opinions.

Ask the question: “who is my audience?”.

Assume there is diversity of opinion and background among your listeners in terms of age, race, gender, religion, culture, philosophy, believe system etc. Do not base your speech on the majority of the group and ignore minority group even if they are scantly represented. One person that is different from all other listeners is still worthy considerations in your speech, you cannot assume he/she does not exist in your speech even if he/she is the only one among the group of many homogeneous people. However, you can focus on commonalities among the audience, for instance, assume everyone is living withing the locality of your speech environment, everyone has same professional interest about the subject if the subject is addressing a certain professional field.

There are several types of audience analysis that may includes:

  • Demographic audience analysis
  • Psychological audience analysis
  • situational audience analysis

Demographic audience analysis

 Demographics are broad sociocultural categories, such as age, gender, race, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, education level, religion, ethnicity, and nationality usually segment a larger population into groups. A large population could be divided into smaller groups like teenagers, the elderly, the middle aged, married single, intellectuals, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, people in blue coat industries etc.  Being aware of diverse demographics is useful in that you can tailor and vary examples to appeal to different groups of people.

Psychological Audience Analysis

An important aspect of psychological audience analysis involves considering the audience’s attitudes, beliefs, and values, as they will influence perceptions they will have about your speech.

Attitudes are our likes and dislikes and they are easier to influence than beliefs or values because they are often reactionary. Likes and dislikes change frequently and can change dramatically based on recent developments. If there is something going on in popular culture or current events that has captured people’s attention and favor or disfavour, then you can tap into that as a speaker to better relate to your audience.

We come to hold our beliefs based on what we are taught, experience for ourselves, or have faith in.Naturally, beliefs change with age and experiences and so our beliefs change if we encounter new information or experiences that counter previous ones.

Our values deal with what we view as right or wrong, good or bad and do change over time but mostly as a result of a life transition or life-changing event such as a birth, death, or trauma.

Psychological Audience Analysis considers your audience’s psychological dispositions toward the topic, speaker, and occasion and how their attitudes, beliefs, and values affects disposition toward your topic.

When considering your audience’s , you want to assess your audience’s knowledge of the subject.

To positively engage your audience,establish your credibility to make them see you as a competent, trustworthy and worthy of listening. If your reputation is not positive based on your previous speeches, you will need to work much harder to establish your credibility. If your speeches were good in earlier speeches, your speech will be readily received.

To establish your trustworthiness, include good supporting materials in your speech,cite credible sources and present information and argument in a balanced , non-coercive and non manipulative manner.

Your verbal and nonverbal delivery should be fluent and appropriate to the audience and the context.

The circumstances under which your audience attend your speech will affect their view of the occasion. These circumstances creates two types of audience:

  • captive audience
  • voluntary audience

Captive audience

Includes people who are required to attend your presentation for example mandatory meetings that are common in workplace settings. many people don’t even like those regular meetings and so you may want to build common ground with your audience to overcome any potential resentment for the required gathering.

You may have to work harder to maintain the attention of a captive audience since they may expect to hear the same content they hear every time this particular meeting comes around, and they could just be enduring through your speech.

voluntary audience

 Includes people who have decided to come hear your speech. This is perhaps one of the best compliments a speaker can receive, even before they’ve delivered the speech. You should be aware that this group of audience may have preconceived notions or expectations that you must live up to.

To a voluntary audience, ask yourself what the audience members expect. Why are they here? If they’ve decided to come and see you, they must be interested in your topic or you as a speaker. You may need to understand what makes them attracted to your speech. Perhaps you have a reputation for being humorous, being able to translate complicated information into more digestible parts, or being interactive with the audience and responding to questions. Whatever the reason or reasons, it’s important to make sure you deliver on those aspects. If people are voluntarily giving up their time to hear you, you want to make sure they get what they expected.

Situational Audience Analysis

 Considers the physical surroundings and setting of a speech. It’s always a good idea to visit the place you will be speaking ahead of time so you will know what to expect. If you expect to have a lectern and arrive to find only a table at the front of the room, that little difference could end up increasing your anxiety and diminishing your speaking effectiveness. Knowing your physical setting ahead of time allows you to alter the physical setting, where possible or alter your message and speaking strategies if needed.

ii. Determine Your Purpose for the speech

Your speeches will usually fall into one of three categories; to inform, to persuade, to entertain or amuse our audience. You will choose the topic based on what you want to achieve but most often you may find a need to incorporate more than one purpose to deliver an effective speech.

iii. Choosing a Topic

Once you have determined (or been assigned) your general purpose, you can begin the process of choosing a topic. In most academic, professional, and personal settings, there will be some parameters set that will help guide your topic selection. Speeches delivered at work will usually be directed toward a specific goal such as welcoming new employees, informing about changes in workplace policies, or presenting quarterly sales figures. We are also usually compelled to speak about specific things in our personal lives, like addressing a problem at our child’s school by speaking out at a school board meeting. it’s not often that you’ll be starting from scratch when you begin to choose a topic.

Whether you’ve received parameters that narrow your topic range or not, the first step in choosing a topic is brainstorming.

iv. Brainstorming

 It Involves generating many potential topic ideas in a fast-paced and nonjudgmental manner and can take place multiple times as you narrow your topic. You may begin by brainstorming a list of your personal interests that can then be narrowed down to a speech topic.

It makes sense that you will enjoy speaking about something that you care about or find interesting hence research and writing will be more interesting, and the delivery will be easier since you won’t have to fake enthusiasm for your topic.

Speaking about something you’re familiar with and interested in can also help you manage speaking anxiety. Some speakers may get stuck here if they don’t feel like they can make their interests relevant to the audience. In that case, you can look around for ideas.

v. Specific Purpose

Once you have brainstormed, narrowed, and chosen your topic, you can begin to draft your specific purpose statement.

Specific purpose  is a one-sentence statement that includes the objective you want to accomplish in your speech. You do not speak aloud your specific purpose during your speech but you use it to guide your researching, organising, and writing. A good specific purpose statement is audience centred, agrees with the general purpose, addresses one main idea and is realistic.

 Since a speaker may want to see if he or she effectively met his or her specific purpose , the objective should be written in such a way that it could be measured or assessed, and since a speaker actually wants to achieve his or her speech goal, the specific purpose should also be realistic. 

The speaker could also test this specific purpose by asking the audience questions related to the speech delivered.

vi. Thesis Statement

 It is a one-sentence summary of the central idea of your speech that you either explain or defend.

You would explain the thesis statement for an informative speech, since these speeches are based on factual, objective material.

You would defend your thesis statement for a persuasive speech, because these speeches are argumentative and your thesis should clearly indicate a stance on a particular issue. In order to make sure your thesis is argumentative and your stance clear, it is helpful to start your thesis with the words “I believe.” When starting to work on a persuasive speech, it can also be beneficial to write out a counterargument to your thesis to ensure that it is arguable.

The thesis statement is different from the specific purpose in two main ways:

  1. The thesis statement is content centred, while the specific purpose statement is audience centered.
  2. The thesis statement is incorporated into the spoken portion of your speech, while the specific purpose serves as a guide for your research and writing and an objective that you can measure. 

A good thesis statement is declarative, agrees with the general and specific purposes and focuses and narrows your topic. 

 Although you will likely end up revising and refining your thesis as you research and write, it is good to draft a thesis statement soon after drafting a specific purpose to help guide your progress.

As with the specific purpose statement, your thesis helps ensure that your research, organising, and writing are focused so you don’t end up wasting time with irrelevant materials. Keep your specific purpose and thesis statement at the top of your working outline so you can reference them often.

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