I removed the section on audience from my Rubric, because I had no idea how to properly grade it. I mean… Okay, don’t use slang. Be respectful. Provide context. Great, you’ve got it… Now what?
…Audience is a weird thing for me in general. On one hand, it’s been a constant problem among my students. I have one student who relies very heavily on pop culture references, but assumes that the reader will obviously know what she’s talking about. How could you NOT know about Kylie and Tyga? They’re all over Instagram. Don’t you use Instagram, Mr. Lang?
…So, on that angle, yes. Audience is important. The idea of removing audience from writing (like Bartholomae and Elbow discuss) is risky.
Yet, I just recently helped a recent graduate with her first paper: a personal reflection written in APA. It was a very weird assignment; asking the student to be simultaneously professional and intimate. Like cuddling up to someone during a Job Interview.
I was able to figure out the instructor’s intent (drilling the student on APA via a low stakes paper), but she was so caught up in what she thought the “tone” for APA was supposed to be that she completely forgot her rhetorical purpose. The paper reeked of Engfish. She was trying to write about herself without actually being present. This perceived academic audience sucked the life out of her paper.
So what I ended up doing recently was to tell students to just… be themselves. But I’m really not sure how to approach this. Audience is important, but… Little confused.