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One of the most central concepts for any sort
of technical communication, be it written or
spoken, is a solid understanding of your audience.
By knowing the values, needs, interests, and
concerns of those who will attend your
presentation, you can design a presentation that is
suited especially to their specific situation. In
addition, when you understand your audience and
relate your ideas to their world, you present
yourself as a concerned individual who has taken
the time to connect your ideas to theirs. Chapter 5
of Oral Presentations for Technical
Communication looks closely at the concept of
audience in technical presentations and covers the
following topics:
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What is "Audience?"
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Types of Audiences
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Features of Importance
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International and Cultural
Issues
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Changing to Meet Audience Needs
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Audience Analysis Worksheet
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How to Obtain Information About Your
Audience
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These exercises build on the ideas addressed
in Chapter 5:
1. Take a few minutes to write out a short
paragraph about a topic with which you are very
familiar. Now, consider this topic with two
different audiences in mind: an audience of
middle-school children and an audience of college
educated, mixed background adults. Make a list of
the changes in language, approach, and content you
would make for each audience.
2. Create an audience analysis worksheet for a
presentation about the topic in Question #1. In a
group of three to four students, take turns asking
the group the questions on the sheet. Once each
student has completed the audience analysis for the
group, take turns discussing how the information
you learned from the analysis would help you in
creating a presentation.
3. Customize the example audience analysis sheet
in this chapter for a specific presentation (an
electronic version is available here).
Presentations and Cyberspace. Search on
the Web for information about intercultural
audiences and international communication. Along
with the items discussed in this chapter, create a
list of features that you must pay attention to
when creating presentations for international
audiences. In particular, think about how you would
discuss a particular technical topic in this
setting.
Presentations and Teamwork. Identify a
fairly controversial technical or scientific topic
that interests you and outline the points you would
make in an oral presentation about the topic.
Present the points to a small group of students in
your class, and as a group, discuss all of the
aspects of your presentation that were unclear,
unconvincing, or had gaps. If you had done an
audience analysis before preparing the outline,
what questions would have provided relevant
information and enabled you to construct an outline
that better met the needs of your audience?
Presentations and International
Communication. In a "high-context" culture, the
way in which a message is presented is often just
as important or more important than what is
actually said or written. In a "low-context"
culture, what is said or written is often more
important than the way in which that message is
presented. Using these definitions and doing some
additional research (library, Web), identify one
high-context and one low-context culture. Report
your findings to the class, and explain how you
will approach audience analysis and oral
presentations when you know an audience will
include people from low or high context
cultures.
Presentations and Your Profession. Focus
on a job you now have, or recently had, and think
of an oral presentation you might realistically
make in that setting. Using the guidelines in this
chapter, analyze and characterize your audience.
For each item of information about your audience
that you identify, define specific characteristics
your presentation should have to reflect and
accommodate that item (e.g., the audience is
completely familiar with the topic and the work you
have been doing, therefore you will provide very
little background information).
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