Inquiry Project Article---Translating Ong into Reality

In paging through Cross Talk, the revelance of Walter Ong's Article jumped out at me. "The Writer's Audience is Always Fiction" is relevant to my topic in that I feel one of the methods used to teach writing these days to presecondary students is taught in terms of audience. Students are being instructed heavily in the use of persuasive arguments to an imagined audience. While most students still regard their instructor as the audience, teachers do encourage the students to think in broader terms as to whom they are writing for. One class observation yielded to me a useful tactic: Have students use a writing journal to capture ideas about who they believe their audience to be. In doing so, they might wish to consider what kind of questions the audience might ask. While the audience is usually still imaginary, this lends weight to the "mind" of the audience so to speak. This (sometimes) helps writers formulate strategies for organization. It also helps narrow or broaden the topics a piece of work might address.

The second part of this activity was to seek out feedback from a potenial member of that audience.
Although this part of the task is trickier, it speaks volumes for the willingness of the instructor to involve student's work beyond the classroom. The teacher admitted to me that most audience participation comes from either parents, other instructors, or friends of the student. But she has had some success in working with a local newspaper to review and sometimes publish student writing in the News Trib teen section, which is published twice a month (on alternating Thursdays, I believe.) I believe that Ong would approve of this method. It brings a reality to audience participation that students sometimes lack in the classroom.