Audience and Writing

Annotated Research

Question: What was the effect of giving student writers information about audience?

Answer: “Participants given information about their audience wrote papers judged to be more persuasive than papers written by those who were not given such information.” K Black. 1989. P. 207.

Comment: Someone once said that it is not major research studies that give conclusive evidence of reliable findings; it is the accumulation of studies that should make teachers take notice. If accumulated studies say anything about audience and writing, it is that using knowledge of audience improves writing. RayS.

Title: “Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English.” JD Marshall and RK Durst, Eds. Research in the Teaching of English (May 1990), 205-221.