Audience Behind the Screen

Elbow opens his essay with an anecdote: when he can’t find words or thoughts in a social setting, he closes his eyes to ignore his audience. Often, when I am speaking or listening to people––whether it be professionally or casually––I find my eyes constantly wandering with the occasional glue of eye contact taking place just to reassure that I am in fact still listening. A lack of eye contact is often interpreted as a sign of insecurity, and while this might be true in some of my own cases, I find that I am also able to listen and piece a narrative together more clearly when I am not directly staring into a person’s soul. By shutting off or tuning out one sense another grows more strongly. My ears get bigger.

When a student is writing, his/her eyes are virtually closed to their audience––it is them, their computer screen, a deadline, and a grade. Elbow writes that “…we are liable to neglect audience because we write in solitude…young people often need more practice in taking into account points of view different from their own; and that students often have an improverished sense of writing as communication…” (50-51). Constantly, I stress to my class that what they write is part of a larger conversation. A lot of student often make pop culture references, or name check social applications, that would fall deaf upon any other generation. I try to help them understand that those they are conversing with sometimes need some explanatory detail.