Purpose and Audience

Now that you have your own blog, you can go to it when you come to class, if you like. I'd like for you to post at least two times a week--and keep in mind that:

*YOUR blog can be as useful or useless as YOU make it
*It will be public; I won't be the only one to read it, any more than I will be the only one to read your papers.


PURPOSE and AUDIENCE are vital concerns in writing. Why we write is just as important as to whom we write. Even though you may be asked to write a variety of different essays, each will have its own purpose in addition to being a particular "type." For example, a descriptive essay can do much more than simply describe a scene, a person, a room. A good description is often part of a comparison/contrast, an element in telling a story, or support to clarify an argument.

In addition to PURPOSE, your AUDIENCE--the readers of your blog or your essays--should be kept in mind. If the only writing you ever did was academic, then all of your writing would be expected to be formal. There would be no use of personal pronouns, no contractions, no colloquial expressions, and you would be expected to sound like a "starched shirt" or textbook in everything you write. But the world we live in today is not as formal as the one twenty or even ten years ago. Today, we have a wide range of readers, just as we have a wide range of purposes for writing. Yes, the GRADE you receive for this class eventually comes from me, but I am NOT the only reader of your work. Look around the classroom the next time you come in--here is your audience. You want to write clearly and coherently to capture and maintain their attention, not just mine. You will be reading their writing as well, assisting each other in developing unified papers.

It all sounds good on paper and cyberspace here, doesn't it? And we all know it's not that easy.

We've got to start somewhere, though. And so today, we begin the study of the descriptive essay.