Maximize Understanding

The Elements of Understanding

Understanding involves comprehending or knowing about an object, idea, concept, or process. In essence, you want the audience to comprehend and share the same understanding. It would be a very simple process if you could just exchange memory modules for your audience to upload, but we are not there yet. Today, you will use words to explain your thoughts. Here we are concerned with how you might use different rhetorical strategies to maximize what the audience understands.

Applying Prior Knowledge about the Audience

Apply what you already know about the demographics, background, and life experiences of the audience. Ask yourself, "What does my audience already understand or know?" You can apply the knowledge to maximize understanding.

• Language choice and vocabulary: You'll want to begin your explanation at the right level; ask yourself, "What vocabulary will my audience understand and what do I need to explain before I can explain other concepts?"
• Compare and contrast based upon shared knowledge: When you are showing how two things are alike, create connections with what the audience already knows. In order to maximize understanding, you'll want to compare those things that are already familiar against the new and unfamiliar things. Then, you can demonstrate how they are the same or different.
• Visualize transformation by cause and origin: Where did something come from and how did it get to its present state or condition? Help the audience picture the change from one state or condition to another.
• Classification and grouping alike things to form a concept: First, you'll want to cite examples that are familiar to the audience and put them into the same classification. Then you can put other less familiar objects or ideas into the same class or grouping while using the same label. You can even help the audience generalize to create a classification. For example, let's say you see a fir, a willow, and a linden. By comparing these objects, you notice that they are different from one another in respect to the trunk, branches, leaves, and the like; a further comparison, however, reveals what they have in common: the trunk, branches, and leaves themselves, which form the abstraction from their size, shape, and so forth. Thus, you gain a concept of a tree.
• Sequence and origin: Here you help the audience understand the process or sequence of events in time. You can clearly list and number the steps or events in the order in which they occur. In addition to using sequencing words, you can also use simple mnemonics, like the knuckle mnemonic, which helps the listeners sequence things such as how many days are in each month.

Applying General Strategies

• Perspective-taking: Practice perspective-taking so you can frame and reframe your examples in a way that the audience members will understand. You'll want to see how the members of the audience organize the world cognitively in order to reframe your concepts so that the audience understands them. If your initial explanation is not effective with a particular audience, you may reframe and refocus on different aspects of what you are explaining.
• Repetition: Build upon prior understanding of concepts by repeating and using internal summaries. This ensures the audience does not miss an important idea that is critical to understanding the whole message.
• Questioning: Question your audience to see if they understand what you are saying, and adjust your explanation in order to clarify misunderstandings.
• Paraphrase: Paraphrase what you said for the audience and restate the ideas using different examples. Different audience members may not understand one idea but may understand another that relates more directly to their prior knowledge.

Simply put, you'll want to learn how the audience conceptualizes the world and then use that knowledge to maximize understanding. Use your skills of restating, questioning, perspective-taking, and paraphrasing to help clarify and reinforce understanding as you speak.