In our first reading, Elbow notes that an audience can act as a beneficial or detrimental force. He goes on to state how the idea of an audience often acts as a disruptive force, making the production of an essay difficult for FYC students. I believe this is the case for many of my students. My students are so concerned about “sounding academic” that their writing obscures their meaning or prevents them from discovering new meaning. I understand what they are attempting to do. They are trying to place themselves in the discourse (and, of course, get full points on the audience portion of the grading rubric). But in their flurry of ten-dollar words and complex sentence structures, I am left confused and somewhat frustrated.
After one a round of particularly dreadful rough drafts, I tried a freewriting activity in class. My directions were simple: take out a sheet of paper and pen and write for 15 minutes without stopping. Do not pause. Do not erase. Do not revise. Just write and see where it takes you, what ideas it generates. I set them on their task. They seemed confused when I told them that this assignment would not be collected.
I could sense their hesitancy as they wrote, struggling to keep their pen moving and their ideas flowing. Besides the fact that they were burnt out on the topic of technology, they struggled to ignore audience. Perhaps this struggle will persist as most of their writing occurs in a classroom setting. So, of course, they construct these pieces of work knowing that they will be seen, commented on, and graded. Can they learn to ignore audience (at least in the beginning stages of writing)? And if they did, would their writing be different/better as a result? What would my students’ papers look like if they knew I would not see them?
Despite the activity’s mixed success, I plan to use more freewriting activities. I’ll update with any promising developments.