Week 2 — Read the Room: Listen, Profile, Adapt

Assignment 2 of the term — read an audience through three lenses, trace where your own listening breaks, and explain to a friend why one speech does not fit every room.

This adaptive assignment uses a coaching dialogue to help you turn a first attempt into a clear, evidence-based plan. You remain the speaker and the author. The coach asks questions, checks the reasoning you show, and waits for you to revise before it produces the required report. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Speech Workshop practice the same ideas from other angles; this assignment is where you put them together on an audience you will really face. It builds on Week 1's six-element model: the receiver and the feedback get a closer look here.

The task

This week's shared example is the first-year seminar audience, and it is illustrative and attributed to no one. A student gives an informative speech on food waste in a campus dining hall to a first-year seminar of about 30 students who all eat in that dining hall. The seminar is required, so the audience is captive, and the speech slot is 5 minutes. The running speech's audience profile reads that seminar through the demographic, psychographic, and situational lenses, with one finding and one adaptation for each:

• demographic: first-year students, most new to campus, from a mix of majors, all eating in that dining hall; adaptation: build examples from the dish-return window they pass every day
• psychographic: most have likely never asked where the food goes, and some may hear "food waste" as blame; adaptation: define "plate waste" in one plain sentence and explain with no scolding
• situational: about 30 listeners in a classroom, captive, a five-minute slot; adaptation: open with a sight from their own lunch, keep to three main ideas, and speak to the back row

Chapter 2 walks through the profile, the five stages of the listening process (receiving, attending, understanding, responding, remembering), and the six barriers to listening (physical noise, psychological noise, semantic noise, information overload, pseudolistening, prejudging).

Work these four problems, and show how you reached each one:

1. The running speech's audience profile reads the first-year seminar through 3 lenses, and each lens gets 1 finding and 1 adaptation. How many filled cells does the complete profile have?
2. The listening process has 5 stages, and hearing covers only 1 of them. How many stages are choices the listener makes?
3. This week adds 3 new barriers to listening (information overload, pseudolistening, prejudging) and 4 active-listening habits (focus, withhold judgment, paraphrase, take lean notes). How many new barrier and habit names is that in all?
4. Week 1 sorted noise into 4 kinds, and 3 of those kinds appear on this week's list of barriers to listening. How many kinds of noise are not on the list?

Beside each answer, add one brief explanation, and use your own audience and your own listening for the parts that ask for it:

• Problem 1: build a three-lens profile of a real audience you will speak to this term, such as this class for your next speech. Write one finding for each lens as a tendency, put an adaptation beside it, and say how you could check one of the findings. Describe the group, never a named person.
• Problem 2: describe a real recent moment when your own listening broke down, in a class, a meeting, a briefing, or a conversation. Say whether hearing happened, and name the stage of the listening process where it broke, with a reason.
• Problem 3: name the barrier in that same moment and pair it with one active-listening habit (focus, withhold judgment, paraphrase, or take lean notes). Try the habit the next time you listen to a class, a meeting, or a briefing, and report one difference you could observe.
• Problem 4: a chatbot asked to "analyze my audience of college students" returned this illustrative line: "College students are busy, budget-conscious, and always on their phones." Name at least two things it is missing as an audience profile.

Explain it to a non-expert

A friend has to give a five-minute update at their community choir's season meeting and tells you, "I'll write it once, and it'll work for any crowd." Write a 3–5 sentence message that explains, in everyday words, how to read an audience through the three lenses before speaking, offers one adaptation that fits the choir, and names one limit, such as that a guess about a group is a tendency to check, not a fact about each person in it. Explain any course term in everyday words. More than one good answer is possible; this message is scored with Problem 4.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a coworker preparing a two-minute welcome for a parents' night at a youth swim club, who asks why the same talk would not work at the staff meeting. Model answer: "Think about who will be in the room, what they already know and care about, and how much time and attention they have. Most parents at that night are probably new to the club and want to know what their kid's first week looks like, while staff already know the schedule. So for the parents, I'd swap the club jargon for plain words and open with what happens at the first practice. Remember that those are guesses about the group; ask the front desk what new families usually ask before you lock anything in."

Use that pattern for your friend, with your own wording and examples.

Part 1 — Student instructions

1. Draft all four answers, the four brief explanations, your three-lens profile, your listening-log moment, and your message to the friend before opening a chatbot.
2. Open any course-approved chatbot. Copy the entire Coach Prompt box, including its first and last marker lines, and paste it as one message. The coach will ask for your draft and then work one question at a time.
3. Answer in your own words. Show your arithmetic when asked. Use the coach's feedback to revise at least one answer or explanation, even if your first attempt was strong.
4. Describe groups and situations, never a named classmate, coworker, or family member.
5. Continue until the prompt's exit condition is met, then save the chat's share link and copy the final report exactly as the coach gives it.

The chatbot is a coach, not a ghostwriter. It must draw out your reasoning rather than write your profile, your listening log, or the message for you. If it describes your audience with a cliché about a whole group, or praises you without pointing to anything you wrote, push back and ask it what evidence it sees.

Coach Prompt

COPY EVERYTHING BELOW THIS LINE
ROLE: You are a careful public speaking coach for an introductory Public Speaking course. Draw out and challenge MY thinking about listening and about the audience I will speak to. Do not write my assignment, my audience profile, or my message for me, do not invent work I did not show, and never invent a quotation, a statistic, or a source. Never describe an audience with a cliche about a whole group, and never ask me to name or analyze a real, named person.

ASSIGNMENT: Work through these four problems in order, one at a time. Do not invent, replace, or reorder a problem. The data, illustrative and attributed to no one: a student gives an informative speech on food waste in a campus dining hall to a first-year seminar of about 30 students who all eat there; the seminar is required, so the audience is captive; the speech slot is 5 minutes. Its profile has three lenses (demographic, psychographic, situational), each with one finding and one adaptation. The listening process has five stages: receiving, attending, understanding, responding, remembering. The six barriers are physical noise, psychological noise, semantic noise, information overload, pseudolistening, and prejudging. Week 1 sorted noise into four kinds: physical, physiological, psychological, semantic.
PROBLEM P1: The running speech's audience profile reads the first-year seminar through 3 lenses, and each lens gets 1 finding and 1 adaptation. How many filled cells does the complete profile have?
PROBLEM P2: The listening process has 5 stages, and hearing covers only 1 of them. How many stages are choices the listener makes?
PROBLEM P3: This week adds 3 new barriers to listening (information overload, pseudolistening, prejudging) and 4 active-listening habits (focus, withhold judgment, paraphrase, take lean notes). How many new barrier and habit names is that in all?
PROBLEM P4: Week 1 sorted noise into 4 kinds, and 3 of those kinds appear on this week's list of barriers to listening. How many kinds of noise are not on the list?
After the four answers, I must briefly explain each one: for P1, a three-lens profile of a real audience I will speak to, each finding written as a tendency with an adaptation beside it, plus one way I could check one finding; for P2, a real recent moment when my own listening broke down, whether hearing happened, and the stage where it broke, with a reason; for P3, the barrier in that moment paired with one active-listening habit, plus one difference I observed after trying it; for P4, at least two things missing from the chatbot line "College students are busy, budget-conscious, and always on their phones." I must then write a 3-5 sentence message to a friend who plans one update for any crowd at a community choir's season meeting, explaining in everyday words how to read an audience through the three lenses, offering one adaptation, and naming one limit. I must explain course terms in everyday words.

SCORING CRITERIA: Score only evidence I supply: accurate counts from the week's models (40 points), listening and audience reasoning (32 points), clarity for a non-expert listener (16 points), and showing the work and the evidence (12 points). For each of P1-P4, give 2, 1, or 0 evidence units per criterion; one unit is worth 5 count points, 4 reasoning points, 2 clarity points, or 1.5 showing-the-work points. Sum all four problems within each criterion. Count my final message only with P4, not again with P1-P3.
COUNT UNITS: A correct filled-cell count, stage count, name count, or noise-kind count = 2; the right values with only an arithmetic slip = 1; a missing answer or the wrong values = 0. Do not penalize an alternative valid method or equivalent wording.
REASONING UNITS: For P1-P3 separately, an explanation that meets both parts named for that problem = 2; exactly one part = 1; neither = 0. For P4, BOTH a critique naming at least two missing pieces AND a message to the friend that explains the three lenses with one adaptation and one limit = 2. If full P4 evidence is absent but at least one accurate substantive part appears, give 1. No accurate reasoning = 0; naming a term alone does not earn a unit. An arithmetic slip alone is not a reasoning error.
CLARITY UNITS: For each problem, labeled evidence understandable to someone who has never taken a speaking course, with course terms explained = 2; intelligible evidence that needs rereading because of ambiguity or unexplained terms = 1; absent or unintelligible evidence = 0. Include the final message with P4 if submitted. Missing reasoning alone does not lower clarity for otherwise clear submitted work.
SHOWING-THE-WORK UNITS: For each problem, the values, labels, or steps behind the answer shown so they can be checked = 2; a relevant but incomplete value, label, or step = 1; an answer alone or no evidence = 0. Visible evidence stays checkable despite an arithmetic slip.

Do NOT invent grading rules.

DIALOGUE RULES: Ask exactly one question per message and wait for my answer. Start by asking for my complete first attempt. Build each next question from my exact words. Probe an unsupported claim and ask me to examine its evidence. When I describe an audience, ask whether each finding is a tendency I could check. Keep the conversation focused on questions rather than completed work.

ENGAGEMENT GUARDS: A greeting, copied prompt, yes/no reply, or one-word answer is not a substantive exchange. Do not flatter or accept agreement as evidence. Praise only a concrete move I made, and name the words you are praising. If evidence is missing, say what is missing and ask for it. Require a real revision plus a short reflection on why the revision is better. Do not issue the report early.

EXIT CONDITION: Continue until at least five substantive exchanges have occurred AND I have supplied all four answers and their brief explanations AND written my message to the friend AND revised at least one answer or explanation AND reflected on the revision. Stop only after whichever requirement happens last.

REPORT: After the exit condition is satisfied, output exactly these labelled lines in this order. Replace X with the exact earned score; it may end in .5 and must not be rounded to a whole number. Base every line only on evidence in this chat; write "Not supplied" for missing evidence and never raise the score for polished chatbot prose.
STUDENT'S SCORE: X/100
EVIDENCE FOR THE SCORE: [specific evidence from my answers and explanations]
REVISION MADE: [what I changed and why]
STRENGTH: [one earned strength]
NEXT STEP: [one concrete improvement]
Then tell me to submit this report, my revised work, and the share link.
COPY EVERYTHING ABOVE THIS LINE

Deliverables

Submit these three items in the assignment entry:

• your revised work with all four answers, their brief explanations, your three-lens profile, your listening-log moment and the habit you tried, your critique of the chatbot line, and your message to the friend — written, or spoken and recorded as audio or video with a transcript; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria;
• the coach's five-line report; and
• the conversation share link.

Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

This route assesses the same Week 2 skills — counting the parts of the week's models, profiling a real audience through the demographic, psychographic, and situational lenses without stereotyping, tracing where your own listening breaks down, pairing a barrier with an active-listening habit, and explaining audience analysis to someone who has never taken a speaking course — for comparable time and effort, about 60 to 90 minutes, the same as the coached route. Complete the same four problems, the four brief explanations, and the message to the friend. Then audit your own first draft against the attached scoring criteria, criterion by criterion, and write a second draft. Add a 150–200 word revision memo that names one answer or explanation you changed, the evidence that prompted the change, and one question you still have. Submit the revised work, your completed criteria checklist, and the revision memo in the assignment entry; together they replace the share link and the coach's report. This route uses the same scoring criteria and the same points, with no penalty for choosing it.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

The counts, the explanations, the audience profile, the listening log, the revision, and the message to the friend must be your own. Do not ask the chatbot to write the assignment, profile your audience for you, or add evidence you did not produce. Submit an honest share link from your own dialogue. The equivalent route keeps the same workload and evidence and requires no AI account.

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