Audience and Purpose

1. Audience and Purpose Part 1: Student Audience and Purpose in the Classroom Part 2: Student Audience and Purpose in Writing By Katie & Caleb

2. Part 1: Student Audience and Purpose in the Classroom

3. First off, who is your audience? • Primarily your students, but can also be your coworkers, supervisors, and parents of your students. • For the first half of this presentation, we will focus on student audience

4. Ways to give student audience purpose • Give students purpose through writing: • daily journals • exit slips • creative writing (poetry, short stories, etc.) • peer writing groups

5. Ways to give student audience purpose • Keep your student audience engaged through group activities, such as: • Fishbowl discussions- Set up desks in the front or middle of the room. Allow students to jump in the “fishbowl” (sit at the desks) and participate in the group discussion. Student can only talk if they are in the fishbowl. • Jigsaw activity- Separate a reading assignments or book chapter into segments. Assign each segment to a specific group. Each group will study/annotate their segment and become an “expert” on their passage. Rearrange the groups so each member is an “expert” on a different passage. Have the groups share their findings.

6. Benefits • Groups activities give students purpose, as well as a sense of accountability. Especially in jigsaw activities, where students must share their knowledge and findings with their peers. • Through creative writing, journals, and exit slips, student audience has purpose and an outlet for expression • By working in groups and creative writing, student learning can be enhanced, perhaps more than a teacher lecture.

7. Activity 1: Jigsaw • In groups of 3-4, read and discuss your assigned section of the article. Please write down 2-4 interesting facts or points from your section. “The Mystery of Shakespeare’s Identity” by Farouky http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1661619,00.html • Group 1: Paragraph 1-3 • Group 2: Paragraph 3-5 • Group 3: Paragraph 6-8 • After 5 minutes, form new groups comprised of 1 person from each of the previous groups. Share and discuss your important points.

8. Part 2: Student Audience and Purpose in Writing

9. Audience and Purpose in Student Writing • Importance: • They’re used to either the teacher as audience or writing to“a general audience.” • Stress that focusing on a specific audience helps establish purpose, structure, flow, and technique

10. Start with the Basics • Three types of audiences: • Sympathetic • Neutral • Hostile Be the Audience • You can teach them about it all day. But when you grade papers, are YOU putting yourself in the shoes of the intended audience?

11. Activity 2: Busted! • You’ve been caught 80mph in a 65mph zone with a truck bed full of possessed marijuana and a shovel. You are now in jail, and must write three letters explaining what happened: • one to the judge for your case • one to your parents to apologize • one to your friends to bail them out

12. Audience Awareness Diagnosis • http://wps.ablongman.com/long_long_rw_1/0,8256,1041232-,00.html

13. Satire • Show a clip from The Colbert Report or Daily Show, or have them read an article from The Onion. Ask: • Who do they think the audience is, and why? • Why are other people NOT the intended audience? • Why would those NOT the audience reject the role of audience?

14. Aristotle • Discuss ethos, pathos, and logos with your students. Play/show speeches in the class and together analyze the three appeals used. Have them do this on their own for homework. • “I Have a Dream”-MLK • “Believe Tom Robinson”-Atticus Finch • “Goodnight and Goodluck”-Robert Morrow • “Thank You for Smoking”-Nick Naylor • “Let the People Declare War”-Eugene Debbs

15. Bumper Stickers • Have them look for bumper stickers and bring in messages that catch their attention. • Ask them to describe who they think is driving the car, to create the image of the “author”. • Have them decide who the intended audience is, and how an unintended audience might respond.

16. Article Fetch • Have them bring an article they like from a newspaper/magazine and answer the following: • Who is the intended audience? • Who is the actual audience? • What are the rhetorical strategies used? • Why did he/she choose those strategies?

17. Student Appeal • Ask them to evaluate themselves as an audience in your class: • What are the main appeals you use to teach them? • How do they respond to those appeals? • What do they think they would respond to better? • (this doubles as being useful to you)

18. Movie Review Review • Have them bring 2 or more reviews from different magazines for the same movie: • Rolling Stone, Ent. Weekly, Rotten Tomaties, Aint it Cool.com, local newspapers, one of those family-friendly sites, ect. Ask: • Do the reviews differ? • Are they attempting to cater to different audiences? • What can you glean from the reviews about what the writers expect their audiences to care about?

19. Othello • Choose a monologue from Othello. • Who are they addressing? • What is their purpose? • What changes about what they say and how they say it because of this?

20. Iago • 'Zounds, sir, you're robb'd! For shame, put on your gown; • Your heart is burst, you have lost half your soul; • Even now, now, very now, an old black ram • Is tupping your white ewe. Arise, arise! • Awake the snorting citizens with the bell, • Or else the devil will make a grandsire of you. • Arise, I say! (I.i.119)

21. More Helpful Sources • Aristotle. On Rhetoric. George A. Kennedy. New York: Oxford UP, 2007. • Ede, Lisa and Andrea Lunsford. “Audiences Addresses/Audiences Invoked: The Role of Audience on Composition Theory and Pedagogy.”College Composition and Communication 35.2 (1984):155-71. • Kroll, barry M. “Writing for Readers: Three Perspectives on Audience.”CCC 35.1 (1984):172-85. • Park, Douglas. “The Meanings of ‘Audience’”. College English. 44.1 (1982) 346-57.