Connecting to Your Audience

♦ Develop common ground
-Use personal pronouns: we, you, our
-Ask rhetorical questions
-Share common experiences
– Personalize information
♦ Build and maintain audience interest
-Be Timely: give them information they can use now
-Be Serious: give them information that has a physical, economic or
psychological impact on them
-Be Vivid: give them information that arouses the senses
-Use Proximity: give them information that has a relationship to
each person’s own space
♦ Relating to the audience’s level of understanding
-Orientating listeners: review basic facts before presenting
information
-If audience already knows the information, they will see the
preview statement simply as a reminder, not an insult
-Present new information to audience members that ensures
continued learning and understanding
-You can present information by defining, describing,
exemplifying, and comparing
♦ Reinforcing or changing audience attitude toward you or
your topic
-Predict if the audience members will act
positively/negatively/neutral to the speech topic
-If you as the speaker think the audience is uninterested or views the
topic as unimportant, you need to change their minds early in the
speech
– Practice patience, articulation, and slower speaking

♦ Relating information visually

-Visual aids you can carry and create: yourself, objects, models,
photographs, films, slides, etc.
-Variety of different visual aids: drawings, maps charts and graphs
-Showing visual aids: handouts, marker/chalkboard, overhead
transparencies, and computer based visual aids

Verderber & Verderber (2002) Communicate!
University Speaking Center, 256-1346, speakingcenter.uncg.edu