Week 2 · Lecture outline

Week 2 — Lecture Outline · Listening & Audience Analysis

Public Speaking · COMM 1 Fall 2026 · Prof. Marchetti Fictional sample

Course: Public Speaking — Fundamentals of Oral Communication (COMM 1) · Silver Oak University (fictional sample) · Prof. Marchetti
Objective covered: Objective 2 — Apply effective listening strategies and conduct a thorough audience analysis to adapt messages to a specific audience.
SLOs touched: A (compose & deliver — the audience-analysis profile and the adapt drill) · B (critical listening & analysis — listening types, barriers, critical listening)
Meeting pattern: 2 sessions × 75 min = 150 min. Segment minutes below total ~150; scale to your own pattern.

Week at a Glance


The week's big questions	"What's the difference between hearing something and actually listening to it — and what gets in the way?" and "How do you get to know an audience before you open your mouth — and how do you adapt once you do?"
By the end of the week, students can…	(1) distinguish hearing from listening; (2) name and match the five types of listening to their purposes; (3) identify common barriers to listening; (4) describe the three categories of audience analysis (demographic, psychographic, situational); (5) build a basic audience-analysis profile and state at least one concrete adaptation.
Key vocabulary	hearing vs. listening; listening process (receiving/attending/understanding/responding/remembering); discriminative, comprehensive/informational, critical/evaluative, empathic/therapeutic, appreciative listening; barriers (physical noise, psychological noise, information overload, pseudolistening, prejudging, semantic noise); active listening (focus, withhold judgment, paraphrase); audience analysis; demographic, psychographic, situational analysis; audience-centeredness; adaptation; identification / common ground; voluntary vs. captive audience
Materials	slides (Deck 2), the week's readings + video link, one approved chatbot for the tutorial and the AI-critique, a phone camera or Zoom for the Workshop
Timing note	8 segments, ~150 min total. Session 1 = Segments 1–4 (~75). Session 2 = Segments 5–8 (~75).

Segment 1 — Hook & the Week's Promise (8 min) · Session 1 opens

Hook. Open with a quick story: "A student gave a well-organized speech on the health risks of sleep deprivation to a room full of nursing majors — she opened with 'You probably haven't heard much about this.' But half of them had just finished a pharmacology unit on exactly that topic. The speech fell flat — not because it was a bad speech, but because the speaker hadn't answered the most basic question: who are these people, and what do they already know?"

Turn it to the audience: "Before we ever write a word of a speech, we owe the room two things: our real attention as listeners, and our genuine curiosity about who they are. That's this week."

The week's promise (write on the board):
"By Thursday you'll name five types of listening, identify what stops us from really listening, build a full audience-analysis profile in three categories, and know how to turn that profile into a real adaptation."

Memory hook: "Audience-centered speaking starts before you speak — it starts with listening and looking."

Segment 2 — Hearing vs. Listening; the Listening Process (20 min)

Plain language first. Hearing is a physiological act — sound waves hit your eardrums and your auditory system registers them. It is automatic and mostly passive. Listening is a cognitive and intentional act — you choose to attend, you work to understand, you respond. You can hear perfectly and still fail to listen.

Build the listening process step by step (draw it on the board):
1. Receiving/Hearing — the physical phase: the message reaches your ears and sensory system.
2. Attending — you select this message over competing stimuli. Your attention is a limited resource; you choose what to attend to.
3. Understanding — you interpret and make sense of the message in light of what you already know.
4. Responding — you react: nodding, asking a question, taking notes, adjusting your posture.
5. Remembering — you store the message (or part of it) for later use.

The listening process can break down at any stage — attending gets hijacked by a distraction; understanding gets blocked by semantic noise; responding is skipped entirely (what we call pseudolistening).

Memory hook: "Receiving → Attending → Understanding → Responding → Remembering. The process doesn't stop at hearing — it keeps going until you remember."

Quick interaction (~3 min): ask the class to recall a conversation where they were heard but not listened to. What stage broke down?

Segment 3 — Five Types of Listening (18 min)

Set it up: "Different situations call for different listening goals. A counselor listening to someone in distress is not using the same type of listening as an audience member at a comedy show. Matching your listening type to the situation is a skill."

The five types (put each on a slide with a one-line purpose and a concrete example):

Discriminative listening — the most basic: distinguishing one sound from another, detecting how something is said (tone, pace, vocal variety). Purpose: sense the emotional meaning underneath the words. (Example: noticing the speaker's voice tightens when they mention a topic — that's information, even if the words are neutral.)
Comprehensive/informational listening — understanding the content: what is being said, what are the main points, how does it connect? Purpose: learn and retain information. (Example: a lecture, a briefing, following directions.)
Critical/evaluative listening — analyzing and judging: is the evidence credible? is the reasoning sound? what is the speaker's purpose? Purpose: evaluate the quality and validity of a message. (Example: listening to a persuasive speech and asking "is that statistic real?" — this is the SLO B skill we'll use all term.)
Empathic/therapeutic listening — listening to understand the speaker's feelings and experience, not just the content. Purpose: support, validate, and connect. (Example: a friend venting about a stressful week — they need to feel heard, not fixed.)
Appreciative listening — listening for pleasure and aesthetic enjoyment. Purpose: enjoy. (Example: music, a well-told story, a beautiful piece of oratory.)

The misconception to kill: "Critical listening means being negative." Cure: critical = evaluative, not hostile. It means engaging the mind, not attacking the speaker.

Matching item preview (quiz fuel): draw the table on the board: Discriminative → detect tone/how it's said; Comprehensive → learn the content; Critical → evaluate the evidence; Empathic → understand the feeling; Appreciative → enjoy.

Segment 4 — Barriers to Listening (18 min) · Session 1 closes (~75)

Set it up: "Listening is hard. Not because we lack the capacity but because we face constant interference — barriers that operate at every stage of the listening process."

The major barriers (walk through each with a classroom example):

Physical noise — external sounds that compete for attention: construction outside, a door slamming, a classmate whispering. (Connects directly back to the communication model from Week 1.)
Psychological noise — internal mental distractions: worrying about a text you need to send, daydreaming, rehearsing your own response while the speaker is still talking. "You're physically present but mentally somewhere else."
Information overload — too much content arriving too fast. When a speaker crams 47 statistics into 5 minutes, retention collapses. (The Week 2 implication for us as speakers: don't overload your audience.)
Pseudolistening — going through the motions of listening (nodding, eye contact) while not actually processing the message. (The appearance of listening without the substance.)
Prejudging — deciding before a speaker finishes what they mean or whether they're worth listening to. Can be triggered by a speaker's appearance, accent, perceived politics, or the topic itself.
Semantic noise — word choice or vocabulary that blocks meaning. Technical jargon your audience doesn't know; a word with a different connotation for them than for you.

Active listening strategies — the cures:
- Focus intentionally: commit to attending before the message starts.
- Withhold judgment: let the speaker finish before evaluating. You can disagree after fully hearing.
- Paraphrase: restate what you heard ("so what you're saying is…") to check understanding.
- Take lean notes (for content): capture the main points, not every word — over-note-taking can actually interfere with comprehension.

Memory hook: "The barriers are noise in the system — but active listening is the repair kit."

Interaction — Think-Pair-Share (~4 min): "Think of the last time you failed to listen in a conversation or a class — which barrier got you? Share with your partner." Take a few out loud; name the barrier type.

Segment 5 — Why Audience Analysis Matters (10 min) · Session 2 opens

Hook back in: "Session 1 was about listening. Now the speaker's side: before you open your mouth, you need to do what a good listener does — genuinely try to understand the people in front of you."

Audience analysis is the systematic process of learning about your audience's characteristics, beliefs, values, and knowledge before and during a speech, so you can make choices that serve them rather than just you.

Audience-centeredness means every major decision — what to emphasize, what examples to use, how technical to be, what tone to strike — is made with the audience's needs, knowledge level, and values in mind. It is the opposite of speaker-centered delivery ("I'll just tell them what I know").

Why it pays off, in one sentence: "A message designed for the specific people in the room lands; a message designed for a generic imagined audience usually doesn't."

Segment 6 — Three Categories of Audience Analysis (25 min)

Set it up: "There are three lenses. Think of them as three different questions to ask about your audience. Each lens gives you different, complementary information."

1. Demographic Analysis

What it is: identifying the broad, observable characteristics of the audience — who they are.
Key demographic factors: age/generation, gender identity, educational background, occupation, group memberships (organizations, affiliations), geographic/cultural background.
The critical caution (load-bearing this week): demographics give you tendencies, not certainties. Audience analysis is NOT stereotyping. Using a demographic finding (e.g., "most of the audience are first-year students") to inform a general approach (avoid assuming prior course knowledge) is legitimate adaptation. Treating every individual as if they fit the demographic mold is the error to avoid. "Look for tendencies across the group; don't assign characteristics to individuals."

2. Psychographic Analysis

What it is: understanding the audience's inner landscape — what they think, believe, and value.
Key psychographic factors: attitudes (dispositions toward a specific topic — positive/negative/neutral), beliefs (what they accept as true), values (deeper principles — fairness, freedom, hard work). Also: prior knowledge of the topic; existing opinions about it.
Why it matters more than demographics: two audiences can look identical demographically and hold completely different attitudes toward your topic. A roomful of economics students will approach a talk on minimum wage differently depending on their beliefs about labor markets.

3. Situational Analysis

What it is: understanding the context and occasion — the external factors surrounding the speech.
Key situational factors: size of the audience (3 vs. 300 changes everything); occasion (a class presentation vs. a graduation vs. a town-hall meeting); physical setting (seating arrangement, acoustics, lighting, distractions); time (morning vs. after lunch; allocated time limit); voluntary vs. captive audience (did they choose to be here, or are they required to attend?).
The voluntary/captive distinction: a captive audience (a required class; a workplace all-hands) may include people with low motivation or skepticism. Voluntary audiences showed up because they care — but they may have higher expectations.

One fully worked model-speech moment — the model audience-analysis profile:

Topic: "The benefits of strength training" · Audience: first-year students in an introductory kinesiology class

Analysis type Finding Adaptation

Demographic Most are first-year students (18–19), likely early in their academic career Avoid assuming prior physiology vocabulary; define terms like "hypertrophy"

Psychographic Attitude toward strength training is likely mixed — some find it intimidating; value may center on appearance or health outcomes over performance Open with everyday benefits (energy, sleep, injury prevention) rather than athletic performance

Situational Class is required (captive); mid-morning timeslot; ~30 students in a tiered classroom Keep energy high and use interactive moments to combat mid-morning drift; the captive setting means some motivation-building up front is worth it

Analysis type	Finding	Adaptation
Demographic	Most are first-year students (18–19), likely early in their academic career	Avoid assuming prior physiology vocabulary; define terms like "hypertrophy"
Psychographic	Attitude toward strength training is likely mixed — some find it intimidating; value may center on appearance or health outcomes over performance	Open with everyday benefits (energy, sleep, injury prevention) rather than athletic performance
Situational	Class is required (captive); mid-morning timeslot; ~30 students in a tiered classroom	Keep energy high and use interactive moments to combat mid-morning drift; the captive setting means some motivation-building up front is worth it

Point to teach: the adaptation column is the whole payoff. Analysis without adaptation is just an exercise.

Segment 7 — Identification & Common Ground; the AI-Critique Moment (12 min)

Identification and common ground. Finding common ground — shared values, experiences, or concerns between you and the audience — is a powerful adaptation tool. Rhetoricians call this identification (the audience must see the speaker as like them, or as sharing their interests, before they fully trust the message). This doesn't mean flattering them or pretending; it means genuinely locating the real overlap.

Adapting during the speech. Audience analysis continues once you start speaking. Read the feedback loop: confused faces → slow down and add an example; eyes lighting up → this landed, stay here; fidgeting → you're running long or losing them. This is the Week 1 transactional model in live action.

AI-critique moment (students judge, not consume):

Ask an approved chatbot: "My audience is college students ages 18–22 in a required communication course. How should I adapt a speech on meal prep for them?"
Likely chatbot behavior: it will overgeneralize from the demographic. Something like: "College students love social media, so use TikTok examples; they all prefer visual content; they're all budget-conscious." These are demographic assumptions dressed up as analysis — not the thoughtful psychographic and situational questions that actually drive good adaptation.
Push back: "Some of my students are commuters, some work 30 hours a week, some have significant cooking experience. Does your advice still hold?" Notice whether it adjusts, refines, or doubles down.
The lesson: a chatbot will flatten a diverse audience into a demographic cliché. Genuine audience analysis requires curiosity about the specific people — not a shortcut from age bracket to behavior.

Segment 8 — Callback, Tease, and Hand-off (12 min) · Session 2 closes (~75)

Callback + connections:
- Listening and audience analysis are two sides of the same coin: listening is how you receive others; audience analysis is how you prepare to speak for them. Both skills will pay off every week this term.
- The barriers to listening that we identified (prejudging, overload, pseudolistening) are also the risks a poorly-analyzed audience faces. A speaker who overloads an unprepared audience is building a barrier; a speaker who adapts to their knowledge level is removing one.

Tease next week: "We now know who we're talking to. Next week — Week 3 — we choose what to talk about: how to select and narrow a topic, write a clean specific-purpose statement, and craft a central idea/thesis. That's where the speech actually starts taking shape."

Hand-off (the week's graded work):
- Lecture Tutorial 2 — AI tutor, share-link submission — listening types, barriers, three categories of audience analysis.
- Quiz 2 (listening types, barriers, audience-analysis categories, adaptation).
- Discussion 2 ("When a message fails, who's responsible — the speaker or the listener? / Is 'know your audience' ever an excuse for pandering?").
- Assignment 2 (Audience-Analysis Profile — a full three-category profile for a planned speech topic + an adaptation rationale).
- Speech Workshop 2 — "Analyze + Adapt + Record" — the audience-analysis table, an adaptation, a 60–90-sec recording, and an AI-critique.

Instructor FAQ — Common Stumbles

Student says / does	Quick cure
Confuses hearing and listening.	Hearing is physical; listening is intentional cognitive work. You can do one without the other.
Thinks critical listening means being hostile or skeptical.	Critical = evaluative, not negative. Ask "Is this sound?" not "Is this wrong?"
Mixes up empathic and comprehensive listening.	Comprehensive = understand the content; empathic = understand the feeling underneath. A friend venting doesn't need a fact-check.
Treats demographic analysis as the whole picture.	Demographics are only one lens. Psychographics (what they believe) and situational factors often matter more for the specific speech.
Conflates audience analysis with stereotyping.	Analysis identifies tendencies across a group to make reasonable planning decisions. Assuming every individual fits the mold is stereotyping — and a speaker who does that will still miss the room.
Can't explain the voluntary vs. captive distinction.	Voluntary = chose to attend (higher motivation, possibly higher expectations). Captive = required (may need motivation-building up front).
Writes a profile with no adaptation column.	Analysis without adaptation is just description. Every finding should point to a "so I will…"

Scope flag

This outline stays within Objective 2 (listening and audience analysis). The listening process stages and listening types named here are standard in public speaking textbooks and treated factually — no quotation is attributed to anyone without a verified, linked source. The audience-analysis framework (demographic / psychographic / situational) is a standard taxonomy in the public speaking field — not proprietary. The model audience-analysis profile is illustrative (explicitly labeled "for example"), not a cited study. No statistics, quotations, or sources are asserted in this outline that would require verification — the one link used in class (Julian Treasure's TED talk) is verified and linked in the readings. Fabrication risk: none here, by design.

~ Prof. Marchetti's edition · Fall 2026 · built with thecoursemaker.com