Missing Our Own Audience: The Perceptions of Audience in the Composition Classroom

Although considered a critical part of the writing process by scholars such as Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford, the concept of audience is elusive when actually looking for its presence in composition classrooms. Many instructors believe that they provide a framework for understanding and valuing audience awareness in writing but then do not understand when student writing does not show these connections. This raises the question of how audience is being taught in the classroom. The purpose of this study is to determine how audience is being addressed as a pedagogical framework in first year composition classrooms by instructors as well as how these instructors' students perceive and value audience in their academic and non-academic writing. As it has been argued that writing creates history, documents such as syllabi, assignment sheets, and rubrics from first year composition classrooms are analyzed using grounded theory in order to understand how audience is being addressed in these classrooms. Although a theory cannot be constructed due to limited data, the documents provided a four points of analyses on how the concept of audience is being incorporated into some pedagogies. First, instructors are asking students to engage with an audience but are rarely asking the students to construct their own audience; rather, the instructors assign an audience that students should engage. Second, instructors and students are focusing on both audiences that are addressed, or real, and invoked, or imaginary as Ede and Lunsford define. Third, instructors and students are sharing the responsibility of agency. Fourth and finally, instructors are providing direct language rather than implying in their documents, which allows for students to understand without making inferences on meaning. In addition, using a phenomenological study, student perceptions and values of audience are collected and then analyzed through surveying students currently enrolled in first year composition classrooms. Surveys indicated that students primarily focus on the instructor as the audience. As well, the audience is valued when students compose in the academic setting but not when composing in the non-academic setting. Lastly, analysis of the surveys indicated that the confidence level of the writer was proportional to the value placed on audience awareness.