The Effects of Audience Awareness on Drafting and Revising.

Abstract

The study investigated the effects of writers' attending to the informational needs of their readers. Specifically, each of 60 university freshmen enrolled in 5 sections of freshman composition was randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions: 1) no attention to audience, 2) attention to audience before and during drafting, and 3) attention to audience before and during revising. Students' original and revised essays were scored holistically for overall quality. Results indicated that attending to audience can be effective for improving the overall quality of students' writing. Results suggested, however, that attending to audience is less effective as a drafting strategy than it is as a revising strategy. Recent composition theories and pedagogies consider a concept of audience as central to the process of composing (Berthoff, 1978; Elbow, 1981; Flower, 1985; Moffett, 1968, 1981; Mohr, 1984; Sudol, 1982; Young, Becker & Pike, 1970). Further, much current research that explores composing can be described as audience-based, viewing composing as the act of writing for someone with whom the writer is joined or related in some linguistic situation (Berlin, 1982; Kameen, 1980; Mitchell & Taylor, 1979; Piche & Roen, 1987). Perhaps no one, though, asserts the centrality of a concept of audience more directly or forcefully than James Moffett: If anybody is going to do anything about the teaching of writing, the first priority is going to have to be the rekindling of the sense of audience. Until that's done, nothing else is going to happen (in Squire et al., 1977, p. 298). Many contemporary texts and rhetorics have come to recognize the importance of audience and outline various audience analysis and audience awareness exercises as prewriting and drafting activities. Packer and Timpane (1986), as part of the advice they give for developing and organizing an essay, direct students to Keep three basic elements of your paper always in view: We wish to thank Mike Rogers and Jennifer Stockseth for data scoring. We also thank Joan Doggerel, Paul Niesen, and Gail Smith for help in collecting data. We are especially grateful to Arthur Applebee, Judith Langer, Gesa Kirsch, and two anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Please address all correspondence to Duane H. Roen, Department of English, Modern Languages Building #67, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721. Research in the Teaching of English, Vol. 22, No. 1, February 1988