Matching vocabulary and audience

A key to successful teaching is understanding your audience and matching your vocabulary and illustrations to meet their needs. This is fundamental communication.

John Stott talks about "quadruple thinking" in his excellent book on preaching, Between Two Worlds. This looks like this:

1. the speaker thinks about what he/shewant to say
2. the speaker thinks about how the other persons will hear it
3. the speaker re-thinks what he/she wants to say
4. the speakers re-shapes what he/she says so that the others will understand it and receive it.

This takes some work. One of the most deadly things to communication is assuming that we understand the other person's perspective.

The book is very good, I recommend it if you do a lot of teaching to different audiences.