In this essay I present the results of a national study of over 2,000 writing assignments from college courses across disciplines. Drawing on James Britton's multidimensional discourse taxonomy and recent work in genre studies, I analyze the rhetorical features and genres of the assignments and consider the significance of my findings through the…

At a meeting sponsored by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the National Association of College and University Business Officers, strategies for explaining college costs to external constituencies (the public, media, policymakers) and internal constituencies (campus professionals and alumni) were discussed. Officials from…

Analyzing data from the 1982, 1985, and 1992 Surveys of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA), this study defined arts participation as involvement in a listed activity at least once in 12 months. Respondents were considered crossover participants if they were involved in a single art form in more than one way or if they were involved in more…

Socialization is a process by which children learn the attitudes and orientations that will guide their behavior as adults. The analyses described in this report use this socialization model as a basis for describing the relationship between childhood and early adult arts-related experiences and current arts-related leisure participation. Three…

Many theorists agree that attention to audience in the act of writing is a very crucial component whether product or process oriented. Audience to the classical rhetorician is an audience to be persuaded, a weak-minded audience that needs someone to direct its thinking to a point of decision. Some high school teachers use this approach as they ask…

A study focused on audience selectivity and involvement before and during television exposure. Two types of selectivity were considered: program selection before exposure and changing channels while viewing. The study included four indications of audience involvement: intentionality, or anticipating TV viewing; attention or focused cognitive…

Analyzes the music preference structure of college students based on responses to a variety of music use and preference measures. Finds that the underlying structure of music preference is multivariate and that there are crucial differences between males and females in terms of their "mapping" of music types. (MS)

Describes the function of the children's museum in the life of a community and in the experience of a visitor. Included are the emotional experiences of the museum personnel as they moved to change their facility. (SA)

Three experiments examined 6- to 11-year-olds' judgments about appropriate self-descriptions in front of different audiences. Findings indicated that only older children differentiated between an unfamiliar peer and unfamiliar adult audience in selecting one of two self-descriptive statements. Even the youngest children differentiated between…

Proposes and analyzes Video Audience Simulation Technique (VAST), an electronic instructional aid related to video robotics, used to simulate audiences for public speakers, providing realistic speech rehearsal, instructor control of audience feedback to facilitate learning, and portrayal of specialized audiences unavailable in normal instructional…

Listening is an important part of presenting. An optimum learning environment is one in which individuals participate fully without pretense in the presentation experience. The article explores why listening is so important, offers tips for the best ways to listen to audience members, and examines how not to listen. (SM)

Considers television viewing practices during special events. Examines how audiences organize around such programing and whether this organization changes the understanding of audience connectiveness. Considers connectiveness and privatization in conjunction with conceptions of the public sphere, reviews literature on media events, and applies…

Presents the results from a survey to determine different audiences for the H-Net e-mail lists and H-Net website, to describe the character of those audiences, and determine the audiences' expectations. Believes that this survey may have implications for university policies concerning decisions about library collections and classroom instruction.…