 We will talk about giving speeches and oral presentations. In these two lectures, we will learn to categorize speeches and presentations according to their purpose, analyze the audience for speeches and presentations, and we will discuss the steps required in planning a speech or presentation. Let's see what you would need. You would need to define your purpose, analyze your audience, and develop a plan for presenting your points. Let's talk first about defining your purpose. Speeches and presentations can be categorized according to their purpose, much as interviews and meetings. The purpose helps you determine a content and style. It also affects the amount of audience participation that occurs. When you're trying to motivate or entertain your audience, you generally do most of the talking. During your speech, the audience then plays an essentially passive role. They listen to your remarks, but they provide very little input in the form of comments or questions. So therefore, then you control the content of the message. On the other hand, when your purpose is to provide information or analyze a situation, you and the audience generally interact somewhat. The degree will vary, but there will be some interaction. Basically, a group of people then need to hear the oral equivalent of a written report then the audience members offer comments or ask questions. The most interaction occurs when your purpose is to persuade people to take particular action or collaborate with them in solving a problem or reaching a solution. Now, based on this purpose, you generally begin by providing facts and figures that will increase your audience's understanding of the subjects. You might also offer arguments in defense of certain conclusions or recommendations. In addition, you invite the audience members to participate by expressing their needs, suggesting solutions, and formulating recommendations and conclusions. Because persuasive and collaborative presentations involve so much audience interaction, you can have relatively little control of them. And because you need to be flexible enough to adjust to new input and unexpected reactions, you cannot stick to a pre-written script. Now, a speech or presentation can often accomplish several of these purposes simultaneously. It is not necessary that a speech or presentation accomplishes only one purpose. It happens many times that a speech or presentation accomplishes more than one purpose. Once you have defined your purpose, you will be analyzing your audience which is another basic element of your speech or presentation. Now, this analysis of the audience is particularly important because you will be gearing the style and content of your speech to your audience's needs and interests. First, you will consider the size and composition of the audience. You can easily involve audience members in your presentation when you speak to a relatively small group. With more than 12 people, it gets difficult to manage that involvement and it gets difficult to manage the give and take that's essential in building a consensus. So then your approach may be more towards telling than asking because obviously if it's a large group of people, then you cannot listen to everybody and give them information simultaneously. So then it will be more one way. A homogenous group, a group that is very similar in their knowledge will benefit from a focused speech or presentation. A diverse group on the other hand, requires a more generalized approach because their interests will be diverse, their knowledge level, knowledge basis will be diverse. Therefore, you will have to take a more general approach to the information that you give out. And then you will use less technical jargon and present a broader picture. Obviously, if there is a group in which everyone has the same level and their knowledge is the same, technical knowledge is the same, then your presentation will be more focused. But if there are people in your group whose knowledge is very different from each other, then your presentation will be less technical and more general. Another important factor is your audience's likely reaction to your speech or presentation. So where you have to see how many people are in your audience, how much is their knowledge base, you also have to consider their reaction to your material. You need to decide whether your audience will be hostile, receptive or indifferent to your point of view. Try to learn as much as possible about their level of understanding. How much do they already know about your subject? Depending on that, you will be able to determine what you need to include in your presentation. Take a cold, hard look at their relationship with you. Think, do they already know you? Do they respect your judgment? The answers to these questions will help you decide on the best way to go about planning your speech. Then you come to planning your speech or presentation. Planning an oral message is similar to writing a written message. The planning phases are similar. You will develop the main idea like you do when you are planning a written message. You will construct an outline. You will estimate the appropriate length and decide on the most effective style. Now when you are establishing the main idea in your planning phase, you will start by focusing on the big picture. What is the main idea or theme that you want to convey to the audience? Look for a one-sentence generalization that links your subject and the purpose to the audience's frame of reference. Much as an advertising slogan would point out to an audience how a product is useful for them. We are going to have a look at some examples of these generalized statements. If you say demand for your low-calorie, high-quality frozen foods will increase because of basic social and economic trends. A statement like this will alert your colleagues or the people you are presenting to to the fact that it will be useful for them to listen to your presentation because the company is going to face some profit. There will be a higher demand for the product that they are producing. Similarly, if you say re-organizing added to the market, it will lead to better service at a lower cost. By giving a positive statement like this, it's a generalized statement. You are telling the people who are listening to your presentation of the benefit that they and the company will have. Similarly, we should build a new plant in Texas to reduce our operating costs and to capitalize on growing demand in the Southwest. Now, each of these statements puts a particular slant on the subject. One that is positive and directly related to the audience's interest. After this, we come to organizing the outline. With a well-crafted main idea to guide you, you can begin to outline the speech or presentation. You will gear the structure, you will think about the subject, the purpose, the audience and the time allotted for your speech or presentation. If, for example, you have 10 minutes or less to organize your presentation, if, for example, you have 10 minutes or less to deliver your message, you will organize your thoughts as you would in a brief memo or letter. You will use a direct approach if the subject involves routine information or good news and use an indirect approach if it involves bad news or persuasion. Longer speeches, however, are organized like reports. As we said, short speeches or short presentations that are less than 10 minutes will be organized like a letter or brief memo and will be used as a direct or indirect approach. If there is a long speech, the organization will be like a report organization. If the purpose is to entertain, motivate or inform, then you will use a direct order which is imposed naturally on the subject. If the purpose is to analyze, persuade or collaborate, then you will organize your material around conclusions and recommendations or around a logical argument. You will use direct order if the audience is receptive and you will use an indirect order if you feel that the audience will not be receptive to what you are saying, if you are expecting some resistance to your ideas. A carefully prepared outline may be more than just the starting point for composing a speech or presentation. If you plan to deliver your presentation from notes rather than from a written text, your outline will also be your final script. Your outline is not just a starting point. If you want some notes in your speech to remind you of what you want to say, then your outline can also be a note and can be used as a final script.