Response to Audience Addressed, Audience Invoked

· What different kinds of information emerge from the two types of analysis? What does each reveal or conceal?

· When or why might one type of analysis be more useful than another?

· In what ways do these types of analysis inform each other or reveal weaknesses in each other?

In the matter of audience addressed, this type of writing may work as a genre to appeal to a very specific audience. Speech writers for politicians may prefer this method when considering a topic or issue for the individual speaking. Oral rhetoric is decidedly different than the written word, but I found this to be the best example. Audience addressed allows the write to focus specifically on content geared toward his audience, whomever that may be. It allows him to decide which medium may best carry his message. What is the appropriate tone to take? One of the limitations of this method is that the writer may focus so exclusively on one set group that he may neglect to take into account his unintended audience. This method of writing undoubtedly works best when the writer has a very clear idea of who his actual audience will be.

Audience invoked provides the writer with much the same information as the technique of audience addressed does. However, this method may allow the writer to focus more on his message. Too much clarity regarding audience may give the writer tunnel vision when it comes to the message he is trying to convey. If the writer himself is free to create the stage, we may find a text that is more open in its tone, as the writer may seek to appeal to as many audience members as possible. Or a writer may envision that his audience knows little about the topic he is speaking of. In such a case, we may find ourselves as readers (or audience) exposed in more detail to the message the writer is passing along. One flaw of this method is that the message may become too general. It may lack focus.

All writers tread a fine line where audience is concerned, save perhaps writers of fiction. One might argue the writer must strive to put his best effort into his message for his audience addressed rather than audience invoked. The members of the audience addressed are more likely to be a receptive audience. Writers may imagine themselves appeal to a large base of people with audience invoked, but we must remember this is a concept the writer is dealing with only in his own mind. Audience addressed is the true forum in which his message must play out.

Response to Ede and Lunsford

The whole sum of this article is Ede and Lunsford believe that teachers fall into one of two extremes: the instructor who concentrates far too much on the audience and the instructor who ignores the audience component completely. I believe that to make such an argument may be too rash. Seldom have I seen instructors who ignore completely the aspect of audience. Much of the emphasis on writing is in at least producing a product that is capable of relaying the message the author intends. Without audience, who is to provide that feedback?

Ede and Lunsford are correct in saying that in most cases, the audience for student writing is the instructor. The instructor could therefore be termed "audience addressed," which according to the authors are the people who actually read the writing of the author. "Audience imagined" refers to those the author believes himself to be writing to. He imagines that these are the people who will read his writing.

The concept of audience is not the most important aspect of writing, but it is not one that should be ignored. Message and content are perhaps the most important. The audience plays a role in shaping that message. Whom should the author write to? In what manner should he convey his message so that it has the most impact? While the audience may not provided purpose (as suggested by other authors we have read so far this semester), the audience does influence composition and the language of a piece---its "tone" so to speak.

In Matters Of Audience

It was clear to me from today's in-class work that the students were stuck on how to best broach the topic of audience with our tutees. This includes myself. The problem with academic writing is that too often the teacher is the intended audience. A clever instructor might tell his students to envision that he is writing for a literary critic or perhaps a newspaper panel...but students usually have a hard time sustaining the ruse. A thought occured to me that the emphasis we placed today on audience might work best if emphasis is returned to the paper. Through a clarification of goals, should not the matter of audience fall easily into place? Or, if not easily, should the student at least have a more specific idea of whom he is writing to?

Does the imaginary audience ever become real? Through clarification of goals, the writer can produce a more tightly organized document. For instance, if one is writing a summary of an article detailing Paradise Lost, the student should consider his audience to be fellow Advanced Literary students. In a larger sense, his audience will be academic. Dr. Wilcox presented the issue in this manner: When writing a summary, think of it this way. Write it down and then go and ask the author if this is what he meant. Again, this would be done in an imaginary context, of course.

My group brought up the implication that we need to find common themes among members of the audience. This method may translate better to some genres than to others. The example offered was that of our school newspaper. A common thread that resonates within this audience is an interest in Elmhurst College.

As writers gearing a piece towards a specific audience, we perhaps need to ask two questions:

Who am I writing for?
What is the message I want others to take away from this piece and why?

Asking these questions leads the writer down a path that enables him to fine tune what he desires his work to be and the message that it presents. The piece and the audience should not be regarded as two separate entities, but rather as parts of one process. What is the message and how does one broadcast it?

Response to Ong

Ong's essay, "The Writer's Audience is Always Fiction," takes a look at the differences among the audiences of written and verbal communication. For Ong, the concept of audience is much more a part of vocal communication as opposed to written. The speaker is more likely to know who his audience is and can therefore adapt his speech accordingly. In written communication, Ong says that the writer has no such advantage. Only to a certain degree can the writer predict his audience. He cannot know the mood of the audience, the climate in which is work his read, or a multitude of other things that might affect the meaning of his words. As a speaker, individuals have instantaneous feedback and can adjust the speech accordingly. The feedback for writers takes much longer and often we cannot revise our words until it is too late---the audiene has already walked away with one meaning.

Ong felt the best way to combat this was for the writer to imagine the different roles his audience might be taking on in regard to the writing. Is the audience made up of academics, students, or the general public and how might the message be adjusted accordingly so that eache member of the audience gleans some small idea of the content the author is trying to pass along? While Ong concentrates mostly on the area of classical literature, in the last paragraphs of his article, he states that this argument applies to all genres of writing. He goes so far to suggest that history and even our personal communication is "fictionalized" to a degree since two writers rarely tell the same tale.

Random Fact

I haven't found the study as of yet. My M-I-L told me today that Cornell University did a study that shows the act of holding a pencil in your hand increases learning. Mind you, this doesn't mean the student is taking notes. It appears to be related to the mere act of holding a pencil. The information came from when she was in college for the first time (1970's) so it may be outdated....or may have since been disproven.

9/21/01 Classwork

Instructors have abandoned many of the practices that used to be common in classrooms. The five paragraph model, so emphasized at the junior high level, is criticized by many educators at the secondary level. Instructors want more sophisticated work than the five paragraph method seems to allow. Instead, they are teaching various templates: narrative, compare and contrast, ect. Worse yet, secondary education teachers assume their students are familiar with these models and briefly skim the template before assigning a particular writing project. In many schools, students are segregated in regards to writing. General education courses in English remain a requirement but at one particular high school I am thinking of, students are assigned to a type of writing that they will be taught. College bound students are exposed to a wider variety of writing process theories. Such students study literature and formulate writing projects based on the reading; others are limited to the teaching of writing as it applies to business or technical writing.

Another way that I have noticed the instruction of writing shifting is that it is gearing away from the traditional emphasis on final product. In my daughter's second grade class, the students routinely write stories in a journal which is handed into the teacher at the end of every week. In part this process is meant to emphasize capitalization, grammar, and sentence structure as the teacher corrects mistakes in these areas accordingly. However, she does encourage the creative side of writing in this assignment by statements s such as, "How does this end?" or "Tell me more about this." This manner of teaching emphasizes the creative aspects of writing and simple topics such as grammar. Although this assignment takes places in a second grade classroom, I believe the teacher has the most effective approach in regards to writing.

A carefully crafted balance between structure and invention is a method that may be used by any instructor at any level. To further demonstrate how truly effective this process is, students edit and continue to add to the journals throughout the year. The project is never truly finished until the end of the year and even after it is finished, the students have a final product which to refer to. Since most believe that the reading process is part of writing, the usefulness of this assignment continues to influence the student.

Another way in which the conversation of how to teach writing has shifted is that many no longer consider one final product as an adequate means to judge a student's writing. Many instructors use a portfolio method, in which students gather several writing projects for the review of the instructor over a term of a semester. This prevents an overview of the students work. Problems within one genre may not present themselves in another. For instances, writers who are proficient in the creative aspects of writing may have trouble formulating a research paper. The variety of assignments helps the instructor assess student strengths and weaknesses which allows for more specific occasion for instruction regarding those strengths and weaknesses.

Post Process Pedagogy Response

The quote I found most relevant in this article was "The writing process was not, in other words, so much discovered as created" as stated by Geoge Pullman in his essay Stepping Yet Again Into the Same Current. Breuch suggests to her reader that the elements of writing can be taught in a manner that can be broken down into a useful model that students can use. She admits first in her article that it is difficult to apply this method of teaching writing. Research has shown that translating the value system one has in regards to writing is a difficult, if not impossible task. The process of writing as most accept it (prewriting, writing, revision) is one that many scholars are beginning to distance themselves from as doubts arise that writing can be taught in such a manner. By the end of her article, Breuch suggests to her readers that while this may be possible, it works best in a one on one situation. This way, students have more control over the level of participation.

Breuch also states in her article that writing should also be thought of in this manner: It is public, interpretive, and situated. A writer must always keep in mind his audience. Once writing is complete, is shall and always will be open to interpretation by that same audience. The author cites a few sources who believe that interpretation never ceases. Work produced in the 18th century might well be open to interpretation in the 21st. (The U.S. Constitution is a prime example of this.) What is the reader to do then? Should the reader continue to interpret such a document as it was originally intended or does interpretation change with the times and with the audience?

Breuch encourages teachers to use the pedagogy method sparingly and to lean towards the post process theory. The latter method, she feels, pays more attention to the needs of students. Teaching a method of writing that works for each student often comes down to the individual student himself, but the post process theory is more attuned to addressing the student's individuality as opposed to pedagogy, which seems to offer a "one size fits all" approach.