The concept from this class that helped me the most in writing my speeches this semester was the idea of knowing who your audience is going to be and keeping that in mind when writing the speech. I think that in the past when I wrote speeches for any sort of occasion I tended to think of things mostly in terms of how I would respond to them. I can think of one specific example where I gave a speech at my best friend's wedding where I was his best man. When I wrote the speech I wrote it specifically with him in mind and tried to make it a funny speech that he would enjoy. His wedding was attended by many of his family members and friends of his parents who were not in the same age group. The unfortunate consequence was that my speech was enjoyed by my best friend and my other friends at the wedding, but overall got a lukewarm response. I didn't think about the wide age range and differing levels of acquaintance with Jeremy, the groom, when writing the speech.
As the semester went along I feel like I got better at aiming my speeches at a broader audience. I tried very hard to keep in mind that the majority of the class seemed to be in their early twenties, but at the same time not to forget that the age range was much wider than that. This concept was not something that I was completely ignorant to before this class, but this class definitely opened my eyes as to how important a role the audience plays in a speech. I will certainly not forget this lesson and look forward to my next opportunity to put it in to practice in a real-life public speaking opportunity.
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