version to one group of listeners and the scrambled version to another group. After the speeches, he gave a test to see how well each group understood what they had heard. Not surprisingly, the group that heard the original, unscrambled speech scored much higher. (2) A few years later, two professors repeated the same experiment at other schools. But instead of testing how well the listeners comprehended each speech. They tested to see what effects the speeches had on the listeners’ attitudes toward the speakers. The professors found that people who heard the well-organized speech believed the speaker to be much more competent and trustworthy than those who heard the scrambled speech. In other words, listeners demand clear organization. They have little patience with speakers who jump from one idea to another. They cannot flip back to a previous page to try to understand a speaker’s idea. This requires that speeches be organized strategically. According to Paragraph ((1), the test was given to check the…………. of the speech.
The pronoun they in Paragraph ((2) refers to