Audience Expectations and Teacher Demands (Studies in Writing and Rhetoric)

The audience—the community of readers who will use the texts a writer produces—must be an important influence on the writer for his or her work to be effective.

Robert Brooke and John Hendricks examine the difficult task of teaching "writing for an audience" in a classroom where students know that the teacher, not the addressed audience, assigns the grade.

The authors describe in detail a particular writing class, taught by Brooke and observed by Hendricks, that attempted to teach writing for an audience. By combining the experiences from their study with student reactions to the class, they draw some conclusions about the dynamics of teaching writing and about learning in general.

Robert Brooke is Assistant Professor of English and Co-coordinator of Composition, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He received the 1988 Braddock Award for his article, "Lacan, Transference, and Writing Instruction."

John Hendricks taught composition in the Department of English at the University of Minnesota-Minneapolis and is presently a medical student in the University of Minnesota Medical School, where he is a member of the Educational Policy Committee.