Public speaking series #5

Don’t tell the audience what they already know. This is half of the definition of “boring.” We find a speech boring when we are hearing the same information we’ve heard before. The others half of “boring” takes place when the audience sees no connection between the information and their lives. People expect new information in a speech, not same-o-same-o. In fact, when we get into persuasion, we will see that the only persuasive information is new information, because listeners will have “assimilated” the information they have already heard—they will have filed it away and dealt with it in a way that it is no longer persuasive. Let me give you an example. You probably may know someone who smokes; perhaps you smoke. More than likely, the person who smokes has been told several times that smoking is bad for him or her, but the behavior continues. Whatever “information” he or she has heard that should have made the behavior stop, didn’t work. It’s been filed away, disregarded, refuted, etc. In order for the behavior to change, the person needs new information.