Analyze Your Audience After You Speak After you have given your speech. you're not finished analyzing your audience. It is important to evaluate your audience's positive or negative response to your...

Analyze Your Audience After You Speak After you have given your speech. you're not finished analyzing your audience. It is important to evaluate your audience's positive or negative response to your message. Why? Because this evaluation can help you prepare your next speech. Postspeech analy-sis helps you polish your speaking skill, regardless of whether you will face the same au-thence again. From that analysis, you can learn whether your examples were clear and whether listeners accepted your message. Let's look at some specific methods for as-sessing Jour audience's response to your speech. tts, a I Nonverbal Responses The most obvious nonverbal response is applause. Is the audience simply clapping po-litely, or is the applause robust and enthusiastic, indicating pleasure and acceptance? Re-sponsive facial expressions, smiles, and nods are other nonverbal signs that the speech has been well received. Realize, however, that audience members from different cultures respond to speeches in different ways. Japanese audience members, for example, are likely to be restrained in their response to a speech and to show little expression Some Eastern European listen-ers may not maintain eye contact with you; they may look down at the floor when lis-tening. In some contexts, African American listeners may enthusiastically voice their agreement or disagreement with something you say during your presentation.'8 Nonverbal responses at the end of the speech may express some general feeling of the audience, but they are not much help in identifying which strategies were the most effective. Also consider what the members of the audience say, both to you and to oth-ers, after your speech. Verbal Responses ',")(=2.:szi What might members of the audience say to you about your speech? General com-ments, such as "I enjoyed your talk" or "Great speech," are good for the ego—which is important—but are not of much analytic help. Specific comments can indicate where you succeeded and where you failed. If you have the chance, try to ask audience mem-bers how they responded to the speech in general as well as to points you are particu-larly interested in Survey Responses You are already aware of the value of conducting audience surveys before speaking pub-licly. You may also want to survey your audience after you speak. You can then assess