Real-world writing: Making purpose and audience matter

Original article: LINK

By Grant Wiggins

According to Wiggins, students should be given real-world writing projects that have genuine audiences and purposes, rather than boring, formulaic assignments.

He argues that in school, writing tasks often lack real purpose or audience, making them dull and uninspiring. Students are typically focused on getting good grades rather than making an impact with their writing. By contrast, real-world writing aims to engage and affect the reader, which is what makes writing interesting and valuable. Therefore, teachers should design class writing projects that challenge children to think creatively and write for real audiences.

Backward design

This approach to planning class writing projects involves starting with the publishing goal in mind [LINK]. This means preparing students for real-world writing.

1. Importance of audience and purpose: In real-world writing, knowing your audience and purpose is crucial. Your writing should have a specific impact on your readers, whether it’s to entertain, inform, persuade, or explain something to them [LINK].
2. Mismatch with school writing: Scheme-based writing assignments often lack real purpose and audience. They tend to be verbose, dense, and disconnected from practical application, which is not how writing works in the real world.
3. Empathy and clarity: Effective real-world writing involves cognitive empathy—understanding what your audience needs and presenting information clearly and concisely [LINK]. This is a critical skill that is often overlooked by writing schemes.
4. Improving writing instruction: Instead of focusing on writing skills out of context, teachers should help students find meaningful content to write about [LINK]. Encouraging students to write with conviction and for real audiences can make their writing more impactful and engaging.

Understanding audience

1. Empathy in writing: To be successful as a writer, you need to have empathy. This means understanding who your audience is and what they care about [LINK]. You’re rarely writing just for yourself, so you need to think about your readers’ needs and expectations.
2. Identifying the audience: When writing, it’s important to think about specific people who might read your work. This can help make your writing clearer and more engaging [LINK].
3. Example from Alverno College: Alverno College uses a competency-based approach to teaching and assessing writing. Students are given projects that require them to explain concepts to specific audiences, like explaining aspirin to a non-chemist friend. This helps them practice tailoring their writing to different readers.
4. Success criteria: Teachers and children can create success criteria together with a focus on how well the writing reaches the audience. This includes factors like word choice, tone, structure, and content. Students also assess their own manuscripts, which helps them understand how well they’re communicating [LINK and LINK].
5. Understanding different audiences: There is no single audience for any piece of writing. Writers need to consider different subgroups within their audience and adjust their message accordingly. Not everyone will respond to the same message so it’s important to find the right niche or group that will appreciate your manuscript.

To write effectively, children need to understand their audience deeply and write with their needs in mind [LINK]. This involves thinking about specific people who might read their compositions and making sure their writing is clear, relevant, and engaging for them.

Beyond egocentrism

1. Real-world writing projects: Students should be required to produce writing that has a real-world purpose and audience. This means writing projects should mirror what people actually write in their everyday lives, such as instructions, letters, or reports [EYFS, KS1 & KS2].
2. Feedback and empathy: Children deserve feedback on their writing based on how well it meets its purpose and connects with the audience [LINK]. This helps them understand how their writing is perceived by others and improves their ability to communicate effectively. It also gives them an opportunity to make social connections with their readership. This can be very motivating!
3. Self-assessment and peer review: Before submitting their writing to their teacher, students could: (i) write a statement explaining their purpose and audience, (ii) get feedback from their peers focused on how well the manuscript meets its purpose and reaches the audience, and (iii) revise their manuscript based on this feedback and provide a summary of what feedback they used and why.
4. Making a difference: Children are more motivated to write when they know their writing will have an impact [LINK]. This could be sharing their writing in class, publishing it online, and/or writing something that is personally meaningful [LINK].
5. Serious intent writing: ‘serious intent’ writing doesn’t mean writing about serious topics. It means taking the purpose and audience seriously, whether writing a joke, an advertisement, or a letter to a friend. The goal is to communicate effectively and make a difference to the reader.

Conclusion

Effective writing teaching involves real-world writing projects, understanding the audience, and receiving meaningful feedback. This approach helps students become better writers by teaching them to focus on the impact of their words, rather than just completing a scheme-assigned writing task.