Analysis - Speech or Presentation Example

Opening. Realizing the primacy effect of the beginning (Murdock, B.B., Jr., 1962, p. 482-488), Mike Schroeder started his speech strongly, clearly establishing his ideas and focusing the audience to grasp the meaning of his message positively. In just a few sentences, Schroeder grabbed the attention of the academic audience with the importance of the topic for everyone, what increased listeners’ receptiveness to the providing information. From the beginning, the speaker cared about the speech to remain memorable for the audience.

For this purpose, Mike represented a story of a man that suffered from heart disease that had been treated with stem cells. The story was connected to the main idea of the speech – the necessity to find the effective way to save human lives in the struggle against dangerous diseases threatening the mankind. The story of the real medication with the help of stem cells brought Mike Schroeder’s presentation to life from the beginning. It helped Mike to connect with his audiences even more, making the speech to resonate in people’s minds long after the telling with power effect.

Having started with the core of his message and providing a brief speech outline, the speaker demonstrated his awareness of academic audience expectations as for logical and professional explanation of the topic. Being aware that persuasive speaking is very connected to audience, Schroeder paid extra attention to audience analysis. He watched attentively any nonverbal reactions and signals from the members of the audience (frown, nodding head, rolling eyes, significant smiles), which expressed listeners’ approval or objection of speaker’s viewpoint.

Having identified the subset of the audience that agreed, disagreed, and that was undecided about the positive acceptance of his opinion, Mike primarily focused on the part of the audience that was undecided on the issue. Speaking more directly to the group of undecided listeners allowed Schroeder to address his speech more towards their concerns, explaining in detail some certain points, which could influence people’s positive attitude. Realizing, the audience had not the same beliefs that he, the speaker used the tactic of Osborn, M.

, & Osborn, S. (2000) to establish good understanding with the audience. First of all, Mike emphasized what he had in common with the audience, accentuating people’s attention on the problem of dangerous diseases, which concerned everyone. He also stressed on the importance to care of moral values, which were involved in the topic. Thus, Mike started with the areas of mutual agreement before discussing the points of disagreement, taking in account that the audience was concerned with the problem of using stem cells in practical medicine, willing to discuss new information and listen to speaker’s arguments.

In fact, Mike set the modest goal for changing his audience. His nearest purpose was to get audience’s passive agreement with the necessity to continue research in the field of stem cells and the practical realization of stem cells therapy. The speaker didn’t push his audience to accept his point of view just immediately. He compared his position with the beliefs of other people, showing respect to different opinions. Vocal variety. The speaker was great with his vocal variety, and he was aware of his audience in the back. Mike