Discusses ways to use the author awareness approach (a sense of who wrote the story, how, and why) to teach writing. Notes that this approach improves students' reading as well as writing. (SR)

Describes how a high school newspaper, in response to a large-scale readership survey, used the concept of "packaging" news (breaking story ideas down into smaller pieces to entice readers) to rethink and redesign the paper. Offers hints and staff goals based on their experience. (SR)

Examines the roles of convention, conflict, and conversation in the formation of audience constructs. Finds that writers' textual choices to address or invoke audiences are based more on institutional conventions than on either disciplinary conventions or on situational conditions and constraints. (SR)

Suggests that technical writing teachers pay closer attention to how students constitute an active and demanding audience. Profiles three different, yet representative, types of technical writing students: institute of technology students, industry students, and liberal arts students. (MG)

Both teaching and scholarly writing make sense only if they are part of an ongoing intellectual dialogue. When the audience for creative legal scholarship is small, as it often is, scholarship becomes primarily self-education, with publication a willingness to share ideas. (MSE)

Describes a project in a reading class in which students wrote to communicate with a real audience and in so doing interested themselves and others in reading and writing. Outlines the project's five steps of prewriting, prewriting with partners, writing, revising, and proofreading. Notes the students' overwhelming positive response to the…

Discusses external and internal influences, such as pressure from critics and drive for financial reward, which must be eradicated for a writer of children's literature to remain focused on the primary task of writing to entertain, enchant, and inform young readers. (NH)

Discusses how looking at child readers as audience means looking at how books for children are defined, how child readers are described, and how childhood itself is regarded. Considers several other points such as understanding the evolving concept of childhood, acknowledging the publisher's perspective, identifying underlying ideologies, and…

Considers how hidden ideologies of adults, who control the production, selection, and presentation of children's literature, influence what gets attention and use. Discusses how teachers share with students books that have touched their hearts. Presents annotations of 10 picture books suggesting they are for child and adult audiences. (SC)

Presents a classroom activity that will provide students practice in developing the essential skills of developing a profile of the primary audience. Suggests that students should also explore differences in word usage. Concludes that students will better appreciate the significant function of audience in determining the content, tone, and method…

Argues that an effectively designed intranet can become a valuable medium for facilitating work processes and communication throughout a company, and that sound structure and visual appeal are important in attracting users to an intranet. Examines issues, such as creating form appropriate to function, determining audience needs, and implementing…

Argues for the teaching of "visible features of written texts," or document design, in composition classes. Concludes that educators must teach students how to see their own texts through the eyes of the readers they hope to attract, converse with, and persuade. (SC)

Examines selected texts by Ellen Swallow Richards, a 19th-century scientist who wrote for a variety of audiences. Finds that her audience awareness anticipates modern technical communication practices and alerts scholars to examine gender, class, and other social issues in historical documents as well as current pragmatic discourse. (PA)

Studies problems students face when visualizing a hypertext audience. Traces students' problems with audience analysis to three independent issues: (1) letting operational and functional levels of construction take precedence over figurative meaning; (2) confusing demands of print and oral audience expectations; and (3) conceiving of hypertext as…

Examines potential sources of public-speaking anxiety among undergraduate students stemming from the audience. Identifies three sources of anxiety: degree of formal evaluation, level of audience interest in the topic, and audience's responsiveness to the speaker. Measures willingness to speak and expected speech quality. Finds interest,…