Chapter 4 Summary
Objectives & Outcomes of Chapter 4
1. Understand that professionals who plan, prepare, and present technical documents, presentations, and visuals usually have two broad purposes: to convey verifiable information and to persuade the audience to attend to this information.
2. Identify initial, primary, secondary, and external audiences, and determine whether these audiences are experts, professional nonexperts, technicians, equipment operators, students, generalists, or children.
3. Collect and analyze information about your audiences - the context in which they work, their attitudes and motivations, education, professional experiences, reading level, and organizational role.
4. Adjust material for different audiences in two broad ways: (1) address audiences with different levels of expertise by adjudsting the complexity of the material; (2) address audiences with different organizational roles by shifting the focus of the discussion and the choice of details, including an acknowledgement of audiences' ethical stance or point of view.
Chapter 4 descibes how to modify your technical document presentations and visuals in order to satisfy the type of audience. In order to achieve this, one must be able to identify their purpose, their audience, and also the factors influencing the audience.
Identifying Purposes
Professionals who are about to give presentations or present technical documents usually have two goals in mind: (1) to convey accurate information and (2) to persuade the audience to use the information. To do achieve these goals, the professional in preperation can ask themselves a few questions such as:
• What/Why do I want my audience to learn?
• What decisions will be based off this information and what information is needed to make those decisions?
• What information will persuade the audience?
• What objections might the audiences have and how can I overcome them?
Identifying Audiences
Once the purpose of the presentation has been established, professionals presenting technical documents also need to identify the intended audience. In order to do so, the professional needs to realize that their audience will typically want to hear about specifics rather than general ideas. The presenter also needs to prepare material for a variety of audiences (i.e. initial audience, primary audience).
Types of Audiences:
• Initial Audience: usually the person to whom you submit a document though not necessarily the ultimate decision maker.
• Primary Audience: a person for whom your document is actually intended, the one who will actually use the information, the decision maker.
• Secondary Audience: people who receive and read your document; they have an interest because they are affected by the information or base decisions on it.
• External Audience: people who are outside the immediate organization but are affected by the information or decisions based on it.
Analyzing Audiences
After identifing the audience and purpose of the presentation, an analysis of the audience is needed so you can adjust your presentation accordingly. The chapter suggests considering the following characteristics throughout the final stages of planning:
• Context in which a document is interpreted:
The context in which the document is presented is essential to how easily the audience can comprehend the information. If the information isn't presented correctly, there is a possibility that it could be ignored. There are a few elements that can be adjusted in order to make the document/presentation more aesthetically pleasing such as: paragraph division, headings, page design, and type/size of font or illustrations. Also, defining terms, descending the information from most important to least important, and an uncluttered page layout, will help the "political" context -- this makes sure the audience believes it is important and worth their time to read.
• Purpose and motivation of the audience:
If you know the intended audience, it is pretty easy to determine their purposes and motivations. You will either have a receptive or resistant audience. The order in which you present information is crucial when you know which audience you will have. With receptive audiences, you can present your recommendations and then support them later in the document/presentation. However with a resistant audience, you have to present the problems, discuss alternatives, and then try to persuade them to believe your idea is the best option.
• Prior knowledge the audience may possess:
When you know what your audience's prior knowledge is, you can alter the vocabulary and content to fit their style. Vocational/technical trainined people will require you to focus on a practical uses for the information where as professional or academic trained people can take the theoretical applications as well as practical.
• The reading level of the audience:
Obviously you need to use a vocabulary and statistical information that are relevant to your audience. You have to write your presentation or document around the ability of your audience to comprehend your information. If they can't understand it, they'll more than likely skip over information that could be very important. If the information is concrete and logically organized, the ease of reading will increase, and your information will be conveyed to a wider audience.
• Organizational role of the audience:
The organizational role of your audience is equally important as identifying your audience. They are generally categorized as hierarchical (bosses at the top, managers in the middle, workers at the bottom) or nonhierarchical (everyone contributes equally to the productivity of the organization). Since most of the chapter focused on the audience that was within the presenters area of interest, this part focuses on the audience that does not belong to the area of interest. It is important to keep in mind that your audience may not know much about your product or ideas and to provide them with more background information than any internal audience(audience that is familiar with area of interest).
• Differences in Expertise
Your audience will more than likely have different levels of knowledge with technical communication, therefore, you will need to change and adjust your tone, examples, concepts and language.
• Differences in Roles and Stances
This section of the chapter explains that it is a good idea to maintain the same level of difficulty or simplicity throughout your presentation if the audience is of similar or parallel roles within their organization (i.e. managers of different departments). You can also emphasize on aspects of your presentation that would relatively relate to each group within the organization.
21 comments:
The group did a good job in showing and explaining the objectives and outcomes. Identifying audiences was interesting to think of because you need to focus on your audience when you get into the business world and start doing presentations. Reading the level of the audience was very clear by what it means. I have had different professors that just start in on lectures or classroom work as if everyone knew what to do or the opposite by treating us like we didn’t know anything. Its better when they use the first day to feel out the class and see where everyone is level wise. Chapter 4 was outlined very well, it was really simple to follow and understand.
It is always difficult to portray information we are interested in to those who may be less interested in the information we are putting forward. I now have a better understanding of how to more accurately convey the information I have to share and how to persuade my audience to better attend to the information. When counseling my future clients about their nutrition and/or fitness choices, I need to keep in mind they most likely will not know as much about the field as I do. I like that this chapter discussed questions we need to ask ourselves when presenting this type of information. I think this chapter also gave excellent examples on how to portray our information so others will understand and stay interested in it.
This is a great way to lay out all of the outcomes and objectives as well as tell us different aspects of audiences. I never really thought about it alot, although I have considered it but depending on who you are speaking to, you may have to totally change what you are speaking to them depending on their lifestyle. For example if you are talking to an achieved business man about soemthing, and then have to go talk to a group of 1st graders, you are going to change you curiculum to a great deal in order for diffferent people to understand.
I can relate to chapter four in many ways. The most recent event I can relate it to is presenting my TPR speech on Monday. While preparing for the speech, I had to read my article and put it into words that I know others would understand it. I thought it would be helpful to break the meta-analysis down so that it could be easily understood and that way, maybe, people might actually learn something and take it into consideration with their health. I thought it would also be helpful if I put a chart in it, that way it is easier to understand what I am saying.
This summary was very well written and will be helpful in the future. The information about identifying purposes and having goals I think is very true when making a speech for a class or a power point. I think having accurate information and saying the information in a way people can believe you. I also think knowing who your audience is and knowing exactly who you are presenting in front of is helpful. I know when I had to give a speech in speech 100 I picked a topic the audience would know so they were interested I also used vocabulary words that people were familiar with so they could be on the same level as me. This Chapter was easy to follow and had helpful information.
This summary was very well written and will be helpful in the future. The information about identifying purposes and having goals I think is very true when making a speech for a class or a power point. I think having accurate information and saying the information in a way people can believe you. I also think knowing who your audience is and knowing exactly who you are presenting in front of is helpful. I know when I had to give a speech in speech 100 I picked a topic the audience would know so they were interested I also used vocabulary words that people were familiar with so they could be on the same level as me. This Chapter was easy to follow and had helpful information.
Thinking of how the audience will recieve the information presented will greatly affect the result of a presentation. One example that comes to mind is my very own class report. Being that I am planning on presenting on a automotive topic I have to pay close attention to the audience. The level of understanding could very quickly loose the interest or meaning of my report. Creating a persuasive report that pertains to the level of understanding will be the best outcome. It is surely the presenters job of understanding the audience in terms of vocabulary, and level of topic comprehension.
This chapter really put into perspective for me how many things need to be considered when distributing a document. I didn't realize there were so many different types of audiences to think about. Also, it was interesting to read about what you can do if the document needs to be distributed to all different types of audiences. It can be a little confusing. However, this will likely happen when writing things in the business world, so this is valuble information.
Chapter 4 portrayed very interesting self explanatory concepts that we as communicators should be able to do, especially when it comes to presentations and speeches. Audience varies from place to place, gender, ages and so on. I think that at some point of time when preparing a speech or presentation we need to get down to the audience knowledge and interest, so that the presentation can go smoothly and enjoyable and actually transmit the purpose of the presentation. For 4 years I taught Sunday church school to second graders and I remembered lecturing in a way that the kids could understand by giving them examples that they could understand, I included activities and games that would keep kids interested in coming every Sunday. And thinking it now, I think I meet my expectations of teaching church school.
This chapter is really helpful for public speaking. Identifying the audience which your presentation is for greatly increased the level of comprehension and understanding from the audience. Determining the audience prior knowledge can greatly help the presenter and the audience. For example, if I know that my audience is very knowledgeable in my topic than I can use technical terms. I remember giving a speech on the topic of consumerism and I didn't analyze my audience. In that speech, I didn't give any background information and I just went straight into my purpose. I use technical terms and went into to much details that my audience was lost and missed my intended purpose.
Knowing who your audience is, is very important. When preparing for a presentation you must know who will be there so you can use words, pictures, and/or terms that they will understand. It is also important that the information you use is important and not just filler. I have had some teachers that use power points for everything they just stand up there and read word for word off of there slides. It was the most boring class I have ever taken. I could read it just as good as he could but you had to go to class because he took attendance.
This chapter details the way professionals should think about their presentations and do what the audience wants is the number goal, to make sure that you answer whatever questions might be in their mind or to persuade the audience in to what you want them to like. I think it is great to learn to be able to change the way you speak to adapt to the level of audiences. In my field I will be working with a variety of patients at different ages so I will need to learn to present the information so each individual can understand it and follow the therapy recommended.
At some point in all of our careers we will probably have information we need to share with an audience, this chapter was very helpful with helping us evaluate the audience we have so we can better present our information. I agree with this chapter that it is very important to know how much your audience knows about the information you are giving them so you know how much background information you need to give them so they can truly comprehend what you are saying. This is important because if you are giving the audience a lot of information they already know it is possible that they will zone out and stop paying as much attention, I know this is something I do.
Chapter 4 reminded me what I should be doing for presentations to get the audience involved with what I'm presenting. I know quit a few presentations that I've done in the past has kinda focused on the teacher as my audience and not so much my classmates. Reason being the teacher was the one doing the grading. As I've gotten older I've been focusing on more who I'm presenting to and trying to keep an audience more interested. I know its hard to make a boring subject interesting if you yourself arent interested or excited about it. Pictures and effects help keep an audiences attention and cold, hard facts that effects everyone is what we are all really interested in. For example the news. A lot of people watch the news so they can find out what happened for that particular day.
This was a very good way to display the main points of Chapter 4. I can definitely attest to the problem of preparing for different audiences. I tutor math students and I have to be ready for all different types of audiences. Also you have to be prepared for the different level of expertise of your audiences. When trying to teach someone, you have to translate the information in a way that they can understand it.
After reading this chapter I realized some very important things, it is very important to relate to the audience and put it into their perspective. Yes, if you make a practice speech at home and it sounds great it may not sound very good at all to people who may not share the same interest as you. The more you relate the speech to the audience the more interested the group will be. If a person can adapt to their audience, they will have a great, informative speech.
chapter 4 is a really important chapter because making the material fit the audience levels is always the hardest thing for me. Especially when I'm making presentations about my speech comm. major to non speech comm students. It's always hard for me to remember that not everyone knows the lingo and all the steps to getting the information. This chapter is great because it provides information on how to keep things at the right level and still get the information across.
The audience should be one of the things you should think about the most as you write or speak for a group of people. Keep in mind the reading or the listening level of the audience. Don't use complicated vocabulary when speaking to a younger audience and but use professional words when speaking to professionals otherwise they might undermind you.
You aren't speaking or writing for yourself, you do it for other people.
I thought that the differences in expertise part of the chapter was the one that jumped out at me the most. If you are giving a presentation that is going right over the heads of the people you are presenting to then what is the point of giving the presentation in the first place. The statement know your audience should be one of the first things that you think about when preparing a presentation.
I believe that relating to this chapter will be a helpful tool in the future. I think that in a way we all communicate differently in our everyday lives, according to our audience. For an example, I would not talk to a professor the way I would talk to a friend. This goes along with any aspect of life. You need to keep in mind who you are talking to or who you are writing to. This will prove that you are more professional and creditable. This will prove valid when we are writing business documents in future careers.
I thought this chapter was very helpfull in learning how to identify what kind of audience you are presenting to and then deciding on how to present it from there. It would be too easy to give an entire presentation with the people that you are talking to not understanding much if you're talking to them above their education level or using words that they don't understand. This will be helpfull for me not only in my future career but now as a college student as well with setting up my technical publication report.
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