Abstract
Great authors embody their audiences through the language of their texts. Good readers learn to recognize and respond to the cues such writers embed in their texts about the kind of audience they are expected to be. They also learn from other authors how to fictionalize in their minds audiences like those they have experience being. In this article through an analysis of two texts, we showcase how two middle school writers through their texts, embody their audiences and cue readers to the roles they are expected to play. We then trace the rhetorical moves made by the writers to texts students preferred to read, arguing that the audiences that fired the imaginations of these students were audiences they learned to be from other writers. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings for teaching writing including the need for writing teachers, who are most often the audiences for student writers, to consider whether their own students have sufficient opportunities to write for the kinds of audiences they prefer to be themselves.
Recommended Citation
Ives, Denise K. and Crandall, Cara
(2014)
"Writing for the Audience that Fires the Imagination: Implications for Teaching Writing,"
Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education: Vol. 3:
Iss.
1, Article 6.
Available at:
https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/wte/vol3/iss1/6
Included in
Curriculum and Instruction Commons, Rhetoric and Composition Commons, Secondary Education and Teaching Commons