1. Enabling Students To Think Outside of Themselves
Audience Awareness
Enabling Students To Think Outside of Themselves

2. Non-Audience-Focused Writing
Writing to Think
Writing to yourself
Concentrating on thoughts, feelings, and problems
Personal, expressive, exploratory, or merely informal writing

3. Non-Audience-Focused Writing
Also called Writer-Based Prose
A verbal expression written by a writer to himself and for himself.
It is the record and the working of his own verbal thought.
Examples:
Journals/Diaries
Freewrites
Personal Letters
Notes

4. Audience-Focused Writing
Writing to Communicate
To convey an idea clearly and logically
Writing to Imagine
To create art- poetry, fiction, drama, and song

5. Audience-Focused Writing
Also called Reader-Based Prose
A deliberate attempt to communicate something to a reader
Examples:
Essays
Magazine Articles
Directions s

6. Student Issues with Reader Based Prose
Student problems with coherence stem almost entirely from the inability of some writers to put themselves in their reader’s place and write their work from a reader’s point of view.
These problems are associated with writers who have what they want to say so clear in their own minds that they do not realize they have left out material needed to allow readers to make sense of their ideas.

7. Student Issues with Reader Based Prose
These problems also stem from writers being so involved with the order in which a set of ideas came to them that they do not realize these ideas would be clearer to their readers ordered in another way.

8. Solution Get students to recognize a reader outside of themselves
Emphasize the importance of clarity
Because of the purposeful nature of persuasive writing, it is absolutely essential that readers can easily and clearly identify the writer’s ideas and the logical connections between them.

9. The Shapes Activity Ask class to split into pairs
Describers will describe a given shape and Drawers will attempt to draw the shape without looking at their partner
No communication is allowed except for the Describers instructions: No questions can be asked by the Drawer
Each student will be given the opportunity to be both Describer and Drawer

10. The Shapes

11. Shapes Activity Questions
How similar was your drawing compared to the original shape?
What challenges arose when trying to describe your shape to your partner?
When describing the shapes, what words did you use?
Did your partner use terminology with which you were unfamiliar?
What assumptions did you make about your partners understanding of the shape?
What did you learn from this activity?

12. Results
Students realize that it is hard to escape their own perspectives and tend to relay information through private associations and personal connotations.
Through the Shapes Activity, students recognize that even a simple shape can be difficult to describe.
The connection can then be made that presenting a complicated argument must be carefully and tactfully done in order to properly persuade an audience.

13. A Wider Audience
Once students recognize a reader outside of themselves, they often write their essays for their professor and classmates
Students will sometimes include phrases such as the following:
“As we discussed in class”
“Just like Professor Mayle said”
Many times students will omit definitions discussed in class because they assume the professor and classmates will know this information if they were present during the lecture

14. Solution Get students to recognize a reader outside of the classroom
Emphasize the importance of writing for a wider audience
Especially in English 155, the audience of an essay will move beyond the professor and classmates:
The portfolio graders will be part of the audience at the end of the semester
The Wings editors may eventually become part of the audience
If selected for publication in Wings, hundreds of students from other English 155 classes will also become part of the audience

15. The Ultimate Peer Review
Pair up with an English instructor who teaches at the same time as you
Inform your students ahead of class to bring two printed out copies of their complete essay draft
Write half of your student’s names on blue name tags
Write the other half of your student’s names on green name tags
Send the student’s who have blue name tags to the classroom with the other instructor
You will now have half of your own class and half of the other instructor’s class

16. The Ultimate Peer Review
Group students into pairs so that each pair has a student from each class
Instruct students to introduce themselves, explain the prompt, and exchange essays
Conduct the peer review with specific questions for each student to address
Ask students to reflect in a WebCT Discussion Post on their experience working with another class

17. How does the title of the essay enhance the argument?
In what ways does the introduction grab the reader’s attention?
Using you own words, what is the author’s thesis? Explain if the thesis is supported throughout the essay.
Does this essay exhibit effective organization?
Is the Custom being properly historicized and contextualized?
Are there clearly stated topic sentences which are supported throughout each paragraph? Are there clear, effective transitions? Does each paragraph support the thesis?
Does the author appropriately address the audience? Are there places where the voice and tone stray from the conventions of an academic research/argumentative essay?
Consider Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. Are these appeals being appropriately used in the essay?
What are the strengths of the essay? What about the essay works well?

18. Results
Students realize the importance of clarity for a wider audience
Students are able to see the weaknesses in their own papers by seeing both strengths and weaknesses in their peer’s papers
Some students become competitive with the other class and ask to do Ultimate Peer Review again after they have had time to revise
Some students seem to be more comfortable offering criticism to their partner from the other class

19. Just for Fun
Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a tatol mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.
Why is this significant?
It shows the importance of students looking at their writing carefully so that a reader, even if that reader is themselves, can actually read what has been written!

20. Enabling Students To Think Outside of Themselves
Audience Awareness
Enabling Students To Think Outside of Themselves