Situational Analysis

Audience Analysis: It’s Grrrrreat!

Reviewing Audience Analysis using Cereal Boxes

Objective: After completing this activity, the student will be able to demonstrate the process of analyzing an audience and developing a speech directed towards members of that audience. In addition, the student will demonstrate a comprehension of demographic audience characteristics.

Materials: Five or more (empty) cereal boxes. These boxes should each be of a different variety or directed towards a different market. Examples include one children’s cereal (with a free toy inside), a health cereal, one marketed to women, a bargain bag of cereal, a healthy alternative cereal, etc.

Steps: 1. Divide the students into small groups of four or less. Have one student be the recorder of the group, and another student be the spokesperson. Give each group a cereal box.

2. The students are to conduct a demographic audience analysis of the target consumers they believe would purchase their cereal. Students should examine ALL details of the cereal box to determine purchasers’ demographics (age, gender, economic and/or social status, etc). Encourage creativity and imagination, but explain that their conjectures require evidence that they are reasonable. Record the results on a sheet of paper.

3. Next, the group should analyze the interests of the purchasers of their specific cereal. What could be their potential personality traits, interests, likes/dislikes?

4. From this profile of the purchaser created, the groups should brainstorm speech topics that would appeal to those particular purchasers. Students should come up with at least two potential topics, one that could be informative and one that could be persuasive.

5. In front of the class, each group’s spokesperson should present the group’s findings to the class. Present the cereal box inspected, explain the market audience inferred from the box and from what part of the box this deduction is based on, and the two speech topics.

6. Discuss as a class each group’s presentation. Was the profile accurate? Were the speech topics suggested interesting or appropriate? Discuss what the activity has taught the students in terms of the importance and difficulty of audience analysis in terms of public speaking.

Results: Students will have practiced analyzing a potential audience and creating an audience profile from the audience analysis. From that profile, they will have practiced brainstorming audience pleasing speech topics or subjects.

Analyze your audience!

Topic: Getting information about the audience

Objective: After completing this activity, student will be able to make an appropriate speech for a variety of audience.

Materials: 6 panels which are designed people. Worksheets (are written 10 kinds of people and 10 speech topics) to exercise.

Steps:
1. Show 1 panel which is designed only women. Make students think those women; age, status, appearance, etc… And also, think the situation; place, time, number of women, etc… Discuss their opinions in a few minutes.

2. Teacher explains what kind of speech should be talked for the women.
For example, these women look like 20-30 years old, wear large clothes, and some of them are large with child. The situation is that chairs are provided, and it takes place in the afternoon.
Thus, the speech must be for pregnant mothers. And the topic is, “What food should pregnant women eat every day for unborn baby?”

3. Divide 5 groups. And, hand out one panel each group. Make students do Step 1 in the same ways. Also, discuss what kind of speech is an appropriate.

4. One person from each group present group opinion in the classroom. And discuss about that.

Result: Students can get information about the audience and make an appropriate speech. Teacher hand out students worksheets to confirm their understanding as an assignment.

Aki Kato
Fall 2007

Anywhere But Here: Setting in Public Speaking

Situational Audience Analysis – Setting

Objectives: During the course of an hour long class, the student will be able to accurately assess the quality of a setting for public speaking. After the student assesses the setting, he/she will write a list of three ways that the setting could be quickly and easily improved if he/she were asked to speak there. In order to be correct, each of the three items on the student’s list must be able to be accomplished in under thirty minutes, using only the items that are readily available.

Materials: A work sheet (attached at bottom). Access to five different speaking venues. Each venue should be unique in the potential problems that the student could encounter there.

Steps:
1. As the class enters the room, ask for five volunteers to help with today’s activity. If not enough students volunteer assign the task to random students.
2. Explain to the class that today’s activity will teach them about settings in public speaking. Explain that each of the five volunteers will read a short news paper article to the class, in one of the designated venues. A different student will read at each of the five venues.
3. Pass out one worksheet to each student and remind them to bring a writing utensil.
4. Group the class up and head to the first venue. (If on UNK campus, take them to the M. Drake Theatre). Once there have one of the five volunteers read their article while the rest of the class scatters around the venue and acts as an audience.
5. After the student has read his/her article, ask the reader how he/she felt about presenting information in this particular space. The teacher may need to help the student along by asking questions about size, seat placement, audience location, lighting and acoustics.
6. Once the reader has discussed his/her feelings about the venue, open up the same questions to the rest of the class. After a quick exchange of thoughts, have each student write down a list of three ways that they would alter the venue in order to make it more suitable to public speaking on their worksheets.
7. After the students have completed their lists, have them share some of their ideas. Discuss each of the ideas to determine as a class whether or not they could be followed out in thirty minutes with the materials readily available. Ideas will vary from class to class so be sure to explain why an idea would or would not work.
8. Repeat steps three through six, traveling to four more locations. If on UNK campus, possible locations could include the amphitheatre, the union, the gym, the cafeteria or a classroom. Be sure that the class is able to experience speaking in a total of five different locations. At each of the four remaining locations be sure that the students voice their ideas both verbally and on paper as they did at the first location.
9. After the class as visited five sites, return to the classroom. Ask the class what they learned from this activity about setting and their ability to control it. Ask the class what they feel is the quickest and easiest way to control the setting is. Be sure to have the students write down their answers to these questions on their worksheets.
10. Collect the class’ lists, grade each member of the class based on participation and completion of their worksheets.
Result: As a homework assignment, the students will complete a journal assignment. Each student will type a one page response to the activity, including what they learned and some important tips that they feel could be beneficial to them in the future. Students should also feel free to include any questions that remain about the topic of setting. The journal entry should not be a simple retelling of the events of the activity, students must relate what they did during the activity to how they can control the setting in which they speak.

Name: _____________________________

Location #1: _______________________________________