Experience Communication, 2e (Child)
Chapter 9 Topic Selection and Audience Analysis
1) Surveying your interests is a good starting point for identifying a topic appropriate for a public
speech.
2) One strategy that may help you identify an appropriate speech topic is brainstorming.
3) Topics for speeches never age. A good topic is a good topic over time.
4) You need not worry about narrowing your topic too much; better too narrow than too broad.
5) As a novice public speaker, you should rely heavily on demographic information; when you are
a more experienced speaker, you can ignore demographics.
6) You can learn a great deal about your college classroom audience by observing them.
7) One of your high school teachers invites you back to your high school to give a talk to the
students in her economics class. Your major in econ and your excellent performance in her class
are the reasons she would like to have you make some encouraging remarks to her current class.
The information she has given you and your past relationship with her should help you infer how
to approach the topic.
8) You should be clear on the specific purpose of your speech, and you should be able to state the
outcome you desire.
9) The thesis statement of a speech and the central idea of a composition are similar.
10) Because the First Amendment to the Constitution grants us the right of free speech, it is our
duty to speak boldly and frankly on any topic we choose and with any audience we choose.
11) When selecting a topic for a public presentation, it is best to focus on
A) what you have learned about most recently.
B) what you have had the most difficulty learning.
C) what you know or are willing to learn.
D) what makes you angry.
12) Which of the following is NOT a mistake beginning speakers often make?
A) spending too little time thinking of an appropriate topic
B) searching too long for the “perfect” subject for the speech
C) finding a topic of little interest to the target audience
D) choosing a topic about which the audience knows more than the speaker
13) Some ways to quickly generate a list of ideas for a speech include
A) surveying your interests and brainstorming.
B) grazing Wikipedia and watching YouTube.
C) interviewing family and friends.
D) scanning the headlines of the local newspapers.
14) Being well informed about a topic will not necessarily make it a good choice for a presentation.
You will make a far better presentation if you also feel some ________ the topic, meaning that you
have or will invest some time and effort in a cause related to the topic.
A) interest in
B) commitment to
C) curiosity about
D) discomfort about
15) Which scenario best illustrates the influence of commitment on topic selection?
A) Martine read an article on the Internet about DNA ancestry tests and decided they would make
a good subject for her presentation.
B) Mario decided to make the topic of his presentation his experience volunteering as an English
tutor for immigrants at a local community center.
C) Calista focused on homelessness as a topic for her presentation after seeing a report on
television about a local homeless shelter.
D) Joaquim encountered an article about short selling in financial markets and thought a
presentation on the practice would interest his classmates.
16) The strongest predictor of speech performance is
A) the speaker’s physical appearance.
B) the audience’s attention span.
C) the currency of the topic.
D) the work put into preparation.
17) Speech topics have a life of their own. Some topics endure for decades while others fade fast.
Which topic below is likely to have a brief life span?
A) relationships among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the U.S. government
B) how to care for individuals who are poor, unhealthy, and unrepresented in our society
C) which film will win the most prizes this year for quality and popularity
D) how to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and those who are mentally ill
18) A timely topic is
A) of interest to audiences today.
B) of enduring interest.
C) appropriate for the time allotted.
D) sufficiently focused.
19) When narrowing your topic, you should keep in mind
A) whether the time you have for your speech is sufficient for what you will need to cover.
B) whether you know enough about the topic to begin researching it.
C) whether you can find sufficient resources about the topic on the Internet.
D) whether you can find whatever information you need on Wikipedia.
20) It is best to narrow your topic for a speech
A) once you realize you have taken on more than you can handle.
B) after you have started additional research on the topic.
C) after you have fully researched the topic.
D) before you begin additional research on the topic.
21) Which of the following topics is the narrowest?
A) African-Americans and the American Revolution
B) Crispus Attucks and the Boston Massacre
C) the American Revolution
D) the American Revolution in the North, 1776-1777
22) Which of the following is a good example of audience analysis?
A) asking the audience to choose a relevant topic by a show of hands
B) asking each audience member to supply demographic information about themselves
C) collecting and interpreting publicly available demographic information about the audience
D) mastering the topic well enough to be able to field questions from any audience member
23) Which of the following is most likely a largely captive audience?
A) the thousands of people who come to Washington, DC to attend a presidential inauguration
B) the sales reps and other employees at an annual dinner addressed by the company CEO
C) the graduates and their relatives who attend a college graduation ceremony
D) the millions of people who regularly watch television news programming
24) Which of the following is most likely a largely voluntary audience?
A) people who paid to attend a lecture on modern art at a local museum
B) students attending an art history class to fulfill their school’s graduation requirements
C) kindergarten students on their first day of class
D) high school students on a field trip to a local art museum
25) Which of the following is LEAST likely to be a demographic characteristic useful for audience
analysis?
A) age
B) political party
C) shoe size
D) gender
26) Which of the following is NOT an attitude?
A) Immigration laws should be liberalized.
B) Wickedness will be punished.
C) Taxes are too high.
D) Air pollution should be more tightly controlled.
27) All of the following are potential strategies for analyzing emerging trends among a diverse
audience EXCEPT
A) following topics on Twitter.
B) deciding on a position to take on a topic based on what friends are saying in social media.
C) following links on the Facebook and web pages of relevant organizations.
D) noting topics of concern to friends on Facebook.
28) Which of the following is most deeply embedded in a person?
A) an attitude
B) a belief
C) a value
D) a thought
29) If you use a questionnaire in which you ask your audience to rank the importance of items such
as wisdom, freedom, equality, and faith, you are assessing their
A) attitudes.
B) beliefs.
C) values.
D) politics.
30) What is the relationship among attitudes, beliefs, and values?
A) Values (like health) underlie beliefs (for example that diet affects health), which underlie
attitudes (like concern about the effects of pesticide use).
B) Beliefs (for example that diet affects health) underlie values (like health), which underlie
attitudes (like concern about the effects of pesticide use).
C) Attitudes (like concern about the effects of pesticide use) underlie beliefs (for example that diet
affects health), which underlie values (like health).
D) Beliefs (for example that diet affects health) underlie attitudes (like concern about the effects of
pesticide use), which underlie values (like health).
31) If you use a questionnaire to rank audience feelings about such topics as identity theft, college
tuition, and immigration reform, you are assessing their
A) attitudes.
B) values.
C) beliefs.
D) political leanings.
32) Before giving a speech to his class, Jaehyun searched his school’s website for statistics about
the school’s students—such as their average SAT and ACT scores, their racial and ethnic
background, their gender, and their most popular majors—to begin to get a sense of the audience
he would be addressing. In doing so, Jaehyun was engaging in
A) attitude appraisal.
B) demographic analysis.
C) active observation.
D) online survey.
33) Because the students at her school all live at home and commute to classes, Mika concluded
that she could best hold her classmates interest with a speech devoted to local issues. In drawing
this conclusion, Mika was engaging in
A) inference.
B) deductive reasoning.
C) value analysis.
D) survey research.
34) Observation could reveal all of the following characteristics of an audience EXCEPT
A) the approximate age of audience members.
B) the racial/ethnic makeup of the audience.
C) audience responsiveness to various topics.
D) audience values and beliefs.
35) Which item below is an inference about an audience?
A) They are well dressed in clothing that appears expensive.
B) They appear to be mostly couples.
C) Most are middle-aged and white.
D) They look conservative.
36) Which item below is NOT good advice for a useful audience analysis questionnaire?
A) Keep your questionnaire anonymous and confidential to encourage honest responses.
B) Ask several open-ended questions to make sure you understand the deep values of your
audience.
C) Use the questionnaire to determine identifiable groups within the audience, such as students or
parents.
D) Notice whether there are categories into which practically nobody falls (e.g., no single
individuals in the audience).
37) Which of the following best summarizes the relation between speaker and audience?
A) Good public speakers successfully impose their point of view on their listeners.
B) Good public speakers consider their topic before their audience when deciding what level of
language to use.
C) Good public speakers negotiate a message between themselves and their audience.
D) Good public speakers boldly state their position on controversial topics without concern for the
views of their audience.
38) The specific purpose of a public presentation
A) summarizes what it is about the topic that the speaker expects the audience to come away with.
B) is a complete statement that reveals the content of the presentation to the audience.
C) states the speaker’s topic in general terms.
D) adapts the topic to the audience.
39) Which of the following is likely to be an INEFFECTIVE way to adapt to an audience?
A) A speaker responds to a supportive audience by reinforcing their attitudes about the topic.
B) A speaker anticipates a potentially hostile audience by changing the presentation topic.
C) A speaker dresses in a style that matches the expectations of the audience.
D) A speaker uses colloquial language when addressing a group of friends.
40) If you adapt to your audience, you are more likely to accomplish all of the following EXCEPT
A) getting audience members to remember your message.
B) enhancing the opinion audience members have about you as a speaker.
C) moving the attitudes of audience members in the direction you are advocating.
D) changing the audience’s values in relation to the topic.
41) Which sentence below best states a specific purpose?
A) My audience will be able to explain three ways the Affordable Health Care for America Act
benefits college students.
B) My audience will learn about diabetes.
C) My audience will learn about adult health problems.
D) My audience will learn about media coverage of the current state of U.S. healthcare issues.
42) “The United States needs to improve the quality of higher education” is a
A) statement of purpose.
B) topic.
C) thesis statement.
D) value statement.
43) Faced with an audience that opposes your ideas, the best strategy is to
A) switch positions on the topic so that it appears that your ideas conform with theirs.
B) acknowledge your differences and do what you can to show the merit of your position.
C) directly attack their position, pointing out all the ways it is wrong.
D) proceed with your original message and leave time for questions.