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The overarching purpose of writing is to communicate. As such, the intended audience is a critical consideration for writers. However, elementary school writing instruction commonly neglects the role of the audience. Typically, children are asked to compose a piece of text without a specific audience in mind that is usually evaluated by the teacher. Previous studies have found a relationship between audience specification and higher quality writing among older children. This article presents a study that examined the impact of audience specification on young children's writing. Using a within-subjects design, the study compared writing quality when second-grade students wrote for internal versus external audiences and found that children are more likely to produce higher quality
Keywords: elementary writing instruction, audience awareness, external audience, informative/explanatory text, literacy instruction
Writing, at its essence, is a social process with a communicative purpose (McCutchen, 2006). We write to convey ideas, questions, and experiences. When experienced writers compose text, they write with a particular audience and purpose in mind. Their understanding of the expectations of the readers with whom they are communicating informs the form, content, and language of their writing (Alamargot, Caprossi, Chesnet, & Ros, 2011). Recent writing
standards and frameworks encourage elementary classroom teachers to attend not only to a particular audience in their writing, but specifically to audiences beyond the classroom, such as children or adults in other classrooms, schools, or communities (Graham et al., 2012; National Governors Association Center for Best Practices [NGA] & Council of Chief State School Officers [CCSSO], 2010). The What Works Clearinghouse guide Teaching Elementary School Students to Be Effective Writers, for example, recommends that teachers "design writing activities that naturally lend themselves to different audiences. Otherwise, students view writing in school as writing as writing only for their teacher" (Graham et al., 2012, p. 21). Similarly, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) state that "a key purpose of writing is to communicate clearly to an external, sometimes unfamiliar audience" (NGA & CCSSO, 2010, p. 18). For the purposes of this article, we refer to an audience beyond the classroom as an external audience, distinct from an internal audience such as the classroom teacher or classmates.
Attention to audience, whether internal or external, tends to be entirely overlooked in school...