Presents a procedural model for use as a prewriting strategy to help students "decenter" or distance themselves from their writing and avoid the generalities that characterize egocentric writing. The model provides opposing viewpoints in a student's analysis of problems or issues. (HTH)

Comprehensive and logically sequenced, this guide seeks to helps educators publish on topics such as classroom experience, conference presentations, or research projects. Included in the guide are practical strategies, concrete examples, recommended resources, and advice from experts. The guide focuses on writing and how it is approached and…

Describes an end-of-the-term project in which students were encouraged to write for a specific, actual audience. (FL)

Discusses how junk mail letters can be used to teach students about rhetorical choices and the process of writing. (SRT)

Describes a teaching unit designed to help students discover the interaction of writer, subject, and audience. Reviews the major types of writing used in the unit and the various audiences for whom the students wrote. (FL)

A writer's audience may sometimes be actual readers (real individuals) or implied readers (the reader role the text imposes). Intended readers are individuals the writer expects will actually read the text while the addressed readers are those to whom the writer directs his or her comments--an important distinction in academic writing. For…

Presents a sequence of writing assignments in the form of a dialogue between a teacher and members of a rhetoric class that calls attention to the crucial relation between the writer and the audience. (JL)

This revised and updated resource contains a total of 43 essays that serve to initiate graduate students and more experienced teachers into the theories that inform composition studies. Under Section One--The Givens in Our Conversations: The Writing Process--are these essays: "Teach Writing as a Process Not Product" (Donald M. Murray);…

Intended to help freshman composition teachers develop productive audience strategy in their students, this paper explores useful and functional techniques elicited from expert writers to facilitate the generation of internal audiences for the typical college student in a required writing class. The paper encourages small-group peer discussion to…

Investigates the implications of conceiving writing-as-performance. Claims that public speaking compares closely with a writing-as-performance course. Focuses on students' perception of themselves as writers and of their audience and presents several analogies comparing writing with other performance activities. (JD)

Offering a fresh perspective on making writing meaningful in every classroom, this guide seeks to help the teacher and the parent encourage the student writer as a thinker, not merely as a producer of a paragraph. The guide offers guidance as well as many practical activities that will help students to: organize the mind; play with ideas; find…

As communication is a moral action involving personal choice, composition instructors must help promote their students' character development. Whether during audience analysis, invention, or disposition, composition always involves the development and testing of four virtues: honesty, courage, love, and a combination of hope and humility. Teachers…

Teachers' role as primary audience has important implications for writing instruction. Teachers represent a combination of two audiences: a literal audience--a specific person or group of people implied in a writing assignment--and an ideal audience shaped by the writers themselves. As these two general types of audiences imply, writers both…

In the "real" world of writing, people make writing decisions based in part on their analyses of audience expectations and their own purposes. Yet, composition teachers at all levels assign general or abstract topics for essays rather than create writing tasks that require students to reflect on target audiences. Even students are aware…

The student-teacher memo is a self-evaluative technique that shifts responsibility for writing development from teacher to student. Including descriptions of the intended audience, purpose, and perceived effect of a completed paper, along with specific questions the student would like the teacher/reader to answer on problems in the essay, the…