Course: Public Speaking — Fundamentals of Oral Communication (COMM 1) · Silver Oak University (fictional sample) · Prof. Marchetti
Module: Week 2 of 16 · Fall 2026 · in-person, two 75-minute sessions + one weekly Speech Workshop
Objective covered: Objective 2 — Apply effective listening strategies and conduct a thorough audience analysis to adapt messages to a specific audience.

This file holds two pieces: (A) the Module 2 Overview page ("Start Here") and (B) the Week 2 Announcement that drips out when the module opens. Dates below assume a Tuesday/Thursday pattern with Week 2 meeting Tue Sep 8 and Thu Sep 10, a Speech Workshop that same week, and end-of-week work due Sunday Sep 13, 11:59 p.m. Adjust the day-of-week and times to match your section.

(A) Module 2 Overview — Start Here

Welcome to Week 2: Listening & Audience Analysis

This is your home base for the week. Read it first, then work the checklist below from top to bottom. Everything you need is linked inside the module.

Last week we built the communication model — source, message, channel, receiver, feedback, noise, context. This week we go to both sides of that model at once: the receiver's half and the speaker's preparation half. As a speaker, you are also an audience member. As an audience member, you are practicing the listening your own future audiences will give you. Two questions drive the week: Are you actually listening — or just hearing? And: Do you really know who is sitting in that room?

Listening and audience analysis are the twin engines of audience-centered speaking. A speaker who can't listen can't read feedback; a speaker who hasn't analyzed the audience is flying blind. By Thursday you'll have the vocabulary and the skills to do both — and the Workshop will have you practicing a real audience-adapt drill on camera.

The week's big questions

"What's the difference between hearing something and actually listening to it — and what stands in the way?"
"How do you get to know an audience before you open your mouth — and how do you adapt once you do?"

By Sunday you'll be able to name and distinguish the types of listening, identify barriers, describe the three categories of audience analysis, build a simple audience-analysis profile, and record a short adapted version of a message for a specific audience.

By the end of this week, you can…

Use this as a checklist. If you can do all five out loud, you're ready for the quiz.

• [ ] Distinguish hearing from listening and explain why the difference matters for a speaker.
• [ ] Name the five types of listening (discriminative, comprehensive/informational, critical/evaluative, empathic/therapeutic, appreciative) and match each to its purpose.
• [ ] Identify barriers to listening — physical/psychological noise, information overload, pseudolistening, prejudging, semantic noise.
• [ ] Describe the three categories of audience analysis — demographic, psychographic, and situational — and give an example of each.
• [ ] Build a simple audience-analysis profile and identify at least one concrete adaptation for a specific audience.

What's due this week, and when

Work these in order — each one gets you ready for the next.

Heads-up on the AI tools: this week's AI-critique moment is about a different failure mode than last week's — instead of hollow praise, you'll catch the chatbot making demographic stereotypes. When it says "your audience is college students so they'll all relate to TikTok trends," that's the overgeneralization to flag. Audience analysis means respectful curiosity, not assumptions.

Late policy reminder: 10% off per day late. If life happens, reach out before the deadline.

How to succeed this week

• Know the three categories cold. Demographic (who they are) → psychographic (what they believe and value) → situational (the setting and occasion). They're not interchangeable, and the quiz will test the distinctions.
• Adaptation is the payoff, not the paperwork. An audience-analysis profile is useless if it doesn't change what you say or how you say it. Every analysis item should end with: "so I will…"
• Listening is also a speaker skill. You'll use the feedback loop from Week 1 every time you adapt mid-speech. Listening and speaking are two sides of one coin.
• Audience analysis ≠ stereotyping. You look for tendencies among a likely audience, not certainties about individuals. Every audience is more diverse than it looks. Respectful curiosity, not assumptions.
• The chatbot will overgeneralize. When it says "young people all prefer X" or "your audience is STEM majors so they won't want stories," push back — that's the AI-critique work.

See you Tuesday.

(B) Week 2 Announcement

Release setting: post on the module's start day (offset = 7 days from Week 1), i.e., Tue Sep 8, 2026 — not before. If your platform won't preserve the scheduled date on import, post this as a draft labeled "Release: Tue Sep 8."

Subject: Week 2 — Learning to really listen (and learning who's in the room)

Hi everyone,

You made it through Week 1 — first speech, first quiz, first real look at the communication model. This week we flip to the other side of that model.

As a speaker, you spend a lot of time thinking about what you'll say. This week is about two things that come before any of that: how to genuinely listen and how to understand the people sitting in front of you. Both of those are skills, and both of them will make every speech you give this term better.

Week 2 — Listening & Audience Analysis — tackles two big questions: What's the actual difference between hearing and listening, and what gets in the way? And: How do you know your audience before you start — and then adapt on the fly? By Friday you'll have a full framework for both, and the Workshop will put it into practice with a real audience-adapt drill.

Three things not to miss:
1. Lecture Tutorial 2 — work through the week's concepts with one approved chatbot and submit the share link. Due Sun Sep 13.
2. Speech Workshop 2 ("Analyze + Adapt + Record"), Quiz 2, Discussion 2, and Assignment 2 (the Audience-Analysis Profile) all close Sun Sep 13 — give yourself time for the workshop's recording step.
3. Read/watch before Thursday: the Ch. 4 and Ch. 5 links in the readings page, and Julian Treasure's "5 ways to listen better" on ted.com (it's under 8 minutes and worth every second).

One thing I want you to hold onto all term: the best speakers aren't great performers — they're great listeners. They read the room constantly and adjust. That starts this week.

See you Tuesday,
Prof. Marchetti