Discuss the ways to establish relevance with your audience.
What will be an ideal response?
Listeners pay attention to and are interested in ideas that they perceive as personally relevant. You can help your audience perceive your speech as relevant by highlighting its timeliness, proximity, and personal impact. Listeners are more likely to be interested in information they perceive as timely because they want to know how they can use the information now.
Your listeners are more likely to be interested in information that has proximity, a relationship to their personal "space." Psychologically, we pay more attention to information that is related to our "territory"-to our family, our neighborhood, or our city, state, or country. You have probably heard speakers say something like this: "Let me bring this closer to home by showing you…" and then make their point by using a local example.
You audiences are more likely to pay attention when you present information that can have a serious physical, economic, or psychological impact. It is enough to refocus most students’ attention on what is being said.