Inside Out: chapter 7 Growing Toward a Sense of Audience

Inside Out Strategies for Teaching Writing

Chapter 7: Growing Toward a Sense of Audience

“One of the most desirable sensitivities to cultivate in growing writers is a heightened ability to feel an audience as they write.”

To develop a sense of audience, students need to inprove their word choice, organization, imagery and metaphor, and the implicit and explicit messages in their writing. Writing is a communication process. The writer must be able to provide the rhetorical conventions and techniques necessary for the audience to understand the writer's message. It is a cooperative relationship between writer, the writing and the audience that grows stronger. “Effective literature connects and resonates with its reader.” So, good readers read with a writerly perspective, and good writers write with a readerly perspective. In either case they are connecting, interacting with the other, knowing how to say it and knowing what to expect from the piece. Professional writers are tuned-in to their audience, they trust that their audience will laugh, cry, imagine and live if just for a moment in their writing. To develop a sense of audience requires lots and lots of practice.

We must provide many opportunities for our students to play with and practice different styles of writing to adjust to different audiences. No direct teaching can do what real varied practice, peer discussion, audience discussion, and positive teacher response can provide. Often the school structure is too confining to provide young writers the experiences they need. But we can expand their audiences by forming peer response groups, have students write for the school newspaper, literary magazine, for younger students (e.g. elementary age), the local newspaper, or the school or class website.

At first, young writers need to focus on writing for themselves in journals and personal writing, listening to their own voice. Then they can begin to broaden their circle to include their friends and teacher. We need to encourage these audiences to respond positively gently to the students' work. Allow time for writers to adjust and revise their writing to the needs of their audiences. Then begin to widen the circle of audience to include a broader range of student and adult audiences, all the while focusing on adapting their writing to the newer audiences. This could include trusted adults, older adults, younger children, and family. Then they can extend the circle to the general public such as a member of congress or a corporate business person. Again, as the audience becomes more abstract, a greater degree of writing skill is required to meet the demands of a more sophisticated audience.

The use of persuasive techniques adds flair to an author's voice. Sometimes it is necessary to anticipate an audience's response in order for the writer to get his way; a son asking his father for some forbidden thing. Imagine that! This is where a writer can play on his audience's vulnerability, humm. In a prewriting activity, students can predict their audience's needs allowing them to refine their intuitions. Commercials and advertisements are useful tools to use. Have students o a rewrite to target a different audience. Writing for younger children is an excellent way to allow your students to build confidence. It is best to be able to have the groups meet together to share their writing and to interact with the young audience. Good writers make subtle changes and adjustments for their audience. One activity is to role-play a tramatic incident, assign different characters, and see how the different perspectives compare. Try writing a “Why?” letter, “Why?” letters ask to explain a position on a recent decision. Another way to have a real audience is to perform and publish, could be a PTA meeting, assembly, local television or radio show.

Finally, lots of practice struggling with tough ideas and lots of opportunity to share and discover.