 Teaching Tip
Question:
What does it mean to "address the audience" in my writing?
Answer:
We've probably all heard this phrase at one time or another: You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Surely these words of advice are meant to communicate something more than just how to catch flies. After all, catching flies, or more precisely, attracting them is pretty easy.
What this phrase does communicate very nicely is the importance of properly addressing your audience in your writing, which is what I want to discuss in this newsletter.
Identify Your Audience
What's the first thing you do when you plan to buy a birthday present for a party? You ask what the child likes to do and what his or her interests are. After all, you want the recipient to feel good about the present you bring. The same process applies to writing.
Put simply, your "audience" is the person or group who will read what you've written. Knowing something about your audience before you begin to write can help you plan and organize an essay that will be satisfactory to the audience. In fact, it will affect the choices you make about each of the writing traits measured in MY Access!®—Focus, Content Development, Organization, Language Use, and Mechanics.
Before you begin to write, use these two questions to think about who will read your writing:
- Will your writing be read by someone familiar or unfamiliar to you?
- Does your audience know a little or a lot about your topic?
There certainly are more things you can try to learn about your audience, but these two questions are good starters.
Familiar or Unfamiliar?
Knowing whether your audience will be familiar or not is very important. It will affect the choices you make about the kinds of details and language to use in your writing. When writing to a familiar audience, it may be appropriate to use informal language and personal examples. However, an audience that is unfamiliar to you typically requires more formal language and details. Consider these examples:
Familiar Audience: The weekend I spent at soccer camp was awesome! I met some new players from a team near grandmom's house. We practiced really hard with the trainers and won the championship game on Sunday. The best part was when I scored the winning goal! Thanks for letting me go—I really had a good time!
Unfamiliar Audience: I benefitted greatly from the training I received at the Striker Soccer Camp. The camp was run by a former major league player who combined players from the Loganville Cheetahs with our team. We drilled together and won the final championship game. I believe the skills I learned improved my ability to score goals.
In these examples, the writer may describe the weekend soccer camp differently when writing for a familiar or unfamiliar audience. The first example could very well be part of an email the writer sent to his or her parents to describe the weekend and thank them for letting him or her attend. In the second example, the writer uses more "mature" words to create a serious tone; this example might have been written to describe the writer's experience as part of an application to play on a new team.
Knows a Little or Knows a Lot?
When you know how much your audience knows about your topic, you can make important decisions about how to develop and organize your writing. "Background information" is information that describes how your topic came to be or why it is important. When your audience only knows a little about your topic, chances are you'll have to provide more detailed examples and direct explanations about the topic than when your audience already knows a lot about it. Consider these examples:
Knows a Little: In the 1930s, much of the northern part of the city was used as a landfill. Old building materials, refuse, and ash from the local power plants were dumped in great quantities in the area. Over the years, the landfills were paved over and developed, and as the land continued to settle, the homes have recently started to shift and crack. Since the ground will always be unstable, I believe that the city should buy the properties and convert this section of the city into a park.
Knows a Lot: You don't have to walk far in the northern part of the city to find evidence that the homes have started to shift and crack. Since the ground will always be unstable, I believe that the city should buy the properties and convert this section of the city into a park.
In these examples, the writer may have to explain why the ground is shifting if the audience is unfamiliar with the problem he or she is describing. But when the audience already knows why the ground is shifting, the writer can get right to his or her point.
As you reflect on whom you are writing for, you'll begin to make better decisions about how you craft your writing, and you're certain to catch more flies in the process!
As you work with your application this year, be sure to send us your thoughts and ideas. Just click the Survey button on the main page inside your application. We can't respond personally to your survey since it is anonymous, so if you have any questions you want us to answer personally, please send us an email: info@myaccesshome.com.
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