What is an authentic audience? In school most often, and for some students all the time, the audience they write for is one person, the teacher. The teacher is reader, responder, evaluator, judge. Often those students don't think of their writing as being written for an audience, as they likely don't think of their teacher as an audience of one. I don't mean to diminish the importance of the teacher by suggesting that the teacher isn't authentic as an audience. But when I taught in the Johns Hopkins MA and writing program, where students were hoping to publish their writing, I used to tell them that no matter how good I thought the writing was, I didn't have the means to publish it. Instead, my role was to help them create the best writing they could, so that when they send it to someone with the power to publish it, that decision might come back positive. As a teacher, [COUGH] we're like the director of a play, and all our students are actors. When they perform only for us, it's called a Rehearsal. Their ultimate goal is to perform before a full house of play, goers, an authentic audience. And I can say that as a teacher, I much prefer playing the role of coach to that of soul reader, responder, evaluator and judge. Writing for an authentic audience can be especially valuable for reluctant writers because it first of all, helps them see that they're writing has a purpose. When the writing gets a response from the audience, they can see that writing has power and then having to consider who that new audience might be, they begin to understand the relationship between writer and reader and what writing to or foreign audience means. So what might constitute an authentic audience? Peers inside and outside the classroom, just reading aloud or sharing your work pair response groups. Parents, students can feel and show a sense of accomplishment when sharing their writing with their parents. Wider audiences, and open mic reading, putting up student riding on bulletin boards. I helped run a writing summer camp for students and students used to put up the riding on a bulletin board, along with a plastic baggie full of index cards where readers could jot down words of encouragement. Student publications, perhaps your school has a student, newspaper or literary magazine. You could also put together an inexpensive booklet for your class, where each student select their favorite writing from the year. Professional publications, there are professional writing journals that publish the writing of children. Technology based formats, blogs or sites that publish writing, class could start its own blog. And community outreach, especially for persuasive writing. Here, you can select a specific audience that you might want to persuade to think or do something, right, to the principal of your school about changes you think should be considered. For example, there are many benefits in writing for an authentic audience, there are world purposes [LAUGH] maybe you actually can convince the principal to change some policy in your school. Writing for an authentic audience provides structure and promotes thinking about task and purpose. Students have to consider all these aspects at the same time, what they want to say, what they want to accomplish, their purpose, who the audience is and how best to speak to that audience. And they need to carry the process through to the end through editing and proofreading. You can't send that to the principal of its full of grammatical errors is a pronouncement that your students will listen to when they're writing for an authentic audience. It lets students enter the conversation. Students are engaging in a conversation with others who are outside the bubble of their classroom. Being heard is empowering, getting responses, even just a thank you letter that offers nothing concrete, [COUGH] can feel great. In high school, I wrote a letter to our US Senator about some idea I wanted him to consider, I don't even remember what that idea was. But I do remember that I got a letter back thanking me for my ideas from Senator Ted Kennedy. Authentic audiences also helped show that writing has power. Sometimes your students might get a response that agrees to their request or just having someone come up and tell them they were moved by what that student had written can mean so much. And writing for communication and sharing, not for being assessed allows you as the teacher to become the students, coach and advocate. You and the student are in this task together, you are simply helping the student accomplish the students goals. There are lots of exercises that help students write for authentic audiences and fun exercises that help students understand that one rights to different audiences in different ways. Here's one such exercise. You can take a look at the photograph of the house, and then this is how you could present this to your students first. How would you describe this house, if you were talking to potential buyers and you were a real estate agent? Then try two, how would you describe this house if you were talking to your partner in crime and you were planning to rob it? And three, how would you describe this house to an alien who has never seen a house before and doesn't know what a house is? Let your students try this, it's a fun exercise, and it certainly shows that, when one writes to different audiences, they have different considerations. Before we conclude, you might take a moment and just think about, what are some of the authentic audiences that your students could write to?
