A fundamental challenge that all public speakers face is getting and keeping the attention of audiences. Because audiences absorb large amounts of talk with little chance of taking the floor, the potential for inattentiveness and boredom is significant. In conversational interchanges, the brief duration of speaking turns and regular transfers of…

This article describes a flipped classroom activity that requires students to integrate research and audience analysis. The activity uses Twitter as a data source. In the activity, students identify a sample, collect customer tweets, and analyze the language of the tweets in an effort to construct knowledge about an audience's values, needs, and…