The College Writing Toolkit - Tried and Tested Ideas for Teaching College Writing - Martha C. Pennington
14. Writing for an Authentic Audience
The College Writing Toolkit - Tried and Tested Ideas for Teaching College Writing - Martha C. Pennington
Kate J Kessler [+]
James Madison University
Description
Kate Kessler’s chapter, “Writing for an Authentic Audience,” links the aims of first-year composition with the rhetorical demands of writing for an authentic audience. She refers to the shift in writing pedagogy towards “post-process” writing, which embodies concern for product and rhetorical sensitivity to an audience, as prompting her decision to use real issues and real audiences with her writing students. As Kessler points out, these students are learning how to participate in public and civic discourse while discovering that effective writing can produce real outcomes. She cites “the call to write” – having something to say and using writing to say it – as a powerful motivator, and the examples she gives of student work and their comments on the course support this claim. “Post-process” does not, however, mean that process is absent: Kessler outlines a workshop sequence in which students draft and redraft their writing and move from a relatively simple text (a letter) to a more complex one (a proposal). Like other contributors to this volume, Kessler is aware of the importance of providing scaffolding for writing activities, and of the art of knowing when and how to provide it.