Audience Participation Tips in Persuasive Speeches

Video Transcript

"Hey we are talking about types of persuasion and we've kind of laid it out on the table here. So I want to tell you about something that, for my students it's one of the first things that they always ask me about when we start talking about persuasion and that is, how do I get my audience involved? Is my audience going to be involved? Well usually on the college level your persuasive speech will not involve your audience. However, in the real world very often times it will involve your audience. And what I'm talking about by involvement. I'm talking about several things. Now you can always involve your audience before hand if you have the opportunity. And what I'm talking about there is maybe you write up a questionnaire, especially if it's for the students in your class. Write up a questionnaire. Have them fill it in. What do you think about the legalization of marijuana? What do you think about immigration? What do you think about...? Whatever your topic is come up with a list of questions. Get a feel for your audience. Get them to participate. Maybe give them a survey. And then you talk about the survey in your speech. Now, you my audience, you took this survey and your survey said x,y,z. Okay, that's one form of audience participation. Another form is the Q and A. Now I don't recommend that you do a Q and A, okay? Because what happens in Q and A, well we're just going to talk about it in the next clip. Because what happens in Q and A we start talking about argument. So it is my recommendation that your audience participation ends there. However if you want to involve your audience at the end of the speech you better look at the next clip."