Commendation and Recommendation - Introducing Your Analysis

Q. When you are evaluating a speaker and you have come up with commendation and recommendation,what do you do about the introduction or the beginning. How do you decide what to say before you begin praising and recommending.


A. Good question! To begin, think about the purpose of your introduction. What do you want to do? A couple of possibilities are:

• 
  
• Get the audience's attention so that they really listen to your critique
• 
  
• Outline what kinds of paradigms you are using, help people know and understand where you're coming from, in order to enable them to really understand and apply what you are saying
• 
  
• Establish trust so that both the audience and the speaker take your praise as sincere and your critique as correct.
• 
  

Anything along those lines will be great! Just be certain that everything you say is aimed at achieving a purpose, not just filling time. When you understand your purpose, introductions become part and parcel of the whole process (though they'll never be easy).