I think an important concept in teaching writing, that is often overlooked, is audience.
I mention several times throughout this blog that I think audience is really important. And it’s not that I think it’s important for people to read our work. I think it’s really important that when we write, we have an actual group in mind that may be a potential audience. The audience for my blog has changed a bit since I started a few months ago. Initially, I imagined my only audience would be my professor and potentially a few curious colleagues. But a few fellow bloggers ended up reading a few posts and now I get regular notifications that my blog is actually being read. My audience now is a small group of people online. Because of this, my writing has changed just a little to suit that new audience. Initially, I was writing as if I were just reflecting on things I was learning about in my class. Then I began to explain a bit more of what I was thinking to be more inclusive to those readers who hadn’t been in my class. The audience can have a lot of power in determining what we write, how we write it, and the thoughts that lead to those two acts.
Out of the two texts we read for our class, not considering the other resources we used, on writing I was disappointed that neither had an entire chapter dedicated to audience. Perhaps this is something that isn’t quite as important to others. But I was able to find some information within Best Practices in Writing Instruction that related directly to how I described my writing changing in the preceding paragraph.
The text discussed three different types of audiences within the chapter entitled Reading-Writing Connections. The source discussed a “reflective” audience, in which the writer is composing based on something they are reflecting about and can look back on. The intended audience here is generally the writer themselves. There is a “conversation” or “correspondence” audience whom is in “close proximity” to the writer and share some background knowledge about the subject matter the writer is composing on. Then there is the “publication”, in which the writer is writing for people they do not know and who may not have shared knowledge. With each type of audience, the composition is adjusted based on what the reader already knows or may not know.
I want to be critical of the text for just a minute and point out that the definition of publication or publishing can be different in differing contexts. In grade school, teachers often refer to publication as sharing work with others or making work public. This promotes student’s knowledge of audience and experience in sharing their work with an audience. It also, of course, does mean to sell a piece of work, like a book. So, while the book is referring to publication in a sense that the writer may not be in “close proximity” with the audience, there is a place in which it is helpful to use this term for sharing work within a classroom anyways.
I’d also like to discuss the new ways that teachers can incorporate audience and publication into their classrooms. For students in older grades, it may be likeable to use online resources like blogs, personal web pages, or even social media, to share work with an audience.
I think it would be really beneficial to students if schools took the opportunities they have to create safe online spaces for students to share work and/or to use as a monitored social media platform. In my mind, it would be similar to facebook, with access only to students, their parents, teachers, and select others that could benefit the website environment. It would need to be monitored in attempt to prevent cyberbullying and inappropriate content. But I think it would be a great place for students to publish their work to a wider, yet safe, audience online. It could also be a great place to share about things happening within the school, students experiences, extracurricular activites, etc. All of the technology is available, we just have to make it available to our students. I’m not aware of an app or website that fits all of these parameters exactly, but I have found a handful of websites that do meet a few of them:
I think edublogs is the closest to what I’m thinking, but without a main shared site page for students to share on.
With that said, as a teacher of writing, audience is absolutely something I will make a strong effort to make as authentic as possible for my students. I don’t want my students to feel like they are writing for me during every writing assignment. I want them to consider other students, themselves, and the general public when writing, and have some experience writing for those audiences as well.
Writings about Writing 