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Preparation part 1: selecting the topic and understanding your audience

Site: Poznan University of Technology
Course: Unit 3: Preparation part 1
Book: Preparation part 1: selecting the topic and understanding your audience
Printed by: Guest user
Date: Monday, 25 November 2024, 9:55 PM

Table of contents

1. Choosing the Topic

When it comes to topic selection, sometimes you do not have much choice, as it is simply assigned to you by others.  You may need to adjust it to fit the time allotted for your speech, but that is all that you will need to consider. For example, your boss wants you to present your department’s latest sales figures and you have ten minutes during the next board meeting to do so. In such a situation, you will need to make sure that you include the most important data and your presentation does not exceed ten minutes.

Sometimes, however, you may choose or formulate the subject of your presentation yourself. When you do, start with an idea. What is it that you really want to talk about? Consider the questions:

  1. Do you find the topic interesting?
  2. Will it be interesting for your audience?
  3. Will you be adding to their knowledge or is the subject totally unknown to them? What do they already know about the topic? Do you know more about the topic than the audience does?
  4. Can you narrow the topic down to make it more interesting?
  5. For example, talking about a specific tourist attraction in your home town may be more interesting than presenting several of them in a general way.

It is good to set a limit for yourself and decide to have only one main idea in the speech. Chris Anderson, the curator for TED Talks, says that before you start preparing your speech you need to decide what your “throughline” is (Anderson, 2017). What is the main idea that you are going to present and develop in your speech? (We will discuss developing your main idea in terms of purpose in Unit 4).

As you have seen so far, choosing the subject of your speech is inherently connected to an analysis of your audience. The “best” topic (in your view and based on your interests) may not be interesting to your audience at all!

2. Understanding Your Audience

Why do we need to know who we will be talking to? Firstly, we will be able to choose the message of our presentation, and secondly, we will be able to adjust the tone and style of our speech.

What are some of the things we should know about our audience before we start preparing our speech?

  • First of all, we need to know why the audience has gathered to listen to us. Is it an open lecture at the university, free for all to attend? Or is it an obligatory meeting in the workplace?  (Some people may attend it not because they are interested, but because it is their duty to do so.)
  • Second, it is also good to know some basic demographic data about our audience: what is their age, gender, education level, occupation and economic status? Sometimes you may want to consider learning about their ethnicity and religious affiliation.
  • Third, consider if you know anything about the listeners’ attitudes, beliefs and values. The important thing to realize is that attitudes can change, whereas beliefs and values rarely do. (publicspeakingproject.org). If the purpose of your speech is to change people’s attitudes about a certain idea, you might want to know what they presently think about the subject.
  • Fourth, you need to know the languages spoken by the audience, and, indeed, if they speak the language of the presentation well; otherwise, you may need to adjust the level of difficulty to fit their proficiency level.
  • Finally, consider if the audience knows you personally and if they are going to be friendly towards you.
Naturally, it is not always necessary to consider all of the above questions before you prepare your speech. Also, you may not have time in advance to study your audience, or learn much about it. In some situations, formal surveys are conducted beforehand, but most speakers only get a general idea about who they will be talking to. In some cases, you may have to ask the audience some questions at the beginning of your presentation. This way you will learn something about them, and also establish some initial rapport. Then you will be able to adjust your message accordingly.

3. Narrowing Down the Topic

When you have identified the subject matter you wish to talk about, it is time to narrow down the topic. In your speech, you want to cover the main idea and include interesting details or examples as well. To do that properly, you need to know the time limit for your presentation. One simple way of narrowing down the topic is dividing your subject into parts and using only one part as the area to be covered in your speech. (DLI, 1995) Choose the part that you are familiar with, and that you and your audience will find interesting.

You may also want to decide if you are going to leave time at the end of your presentation for the audience to ask some questions. Remember that even if you only have 10 minutes for your presentation, you do not need to use all that time. It is always better to give a speech which is a bit too short than a bit too long.

Let us assume that your general topic will be connected with the public technical education system in Poland. You will need to gather much more information to talk to a group of foreign education officials for half an hour than if you were to do it for five minutes in front of some foreign students at a summer camp. In the latter example, consider narrowing the topic down to “My experiences at the technical university in Poznan.” (You will learn more about formulating the topic according to the purpose of your speech in Unit 4.)

Here are some examples of general topics narrowed down:

  • History – History of Poland – History of Polish Local Government in the last 30 years.
  • Education – Elementary Education – What I Remember of My First Day at School.
  • Health – Hospitals – How to Train to Become a Nurse.