Fulwiler and audience

Toby Fulwiler’s text asserts that there are four audiences when it comes to writing a text: teacher, classmates, publication, and yourself. Writing is a way to communicate, but it is affected by who is going to be reading the paper. One line that stands out to me from the text is when Fulwiler says “in the best circumstances, instructors will make writing assignments that give you a good start…they create a climate in which it’s clear that the subject belongs to you, not to them or the text or the school” (174).  Often, when I think back to the writing assignments I have done, it’s always been about a book and teachers have always been very specific with what they want to see, such as certain literary devices, grammar usage, or specific themes that we talked about in class. Nowadays, I see that writing has changed drastically, especially in high school. In my 11^th grade classes, we focus a lot of argument EAP style essays, and writing about whether we agree or disagree with a topic, so that students have the opportunities to make the topic their own. We use examples from texts (especially information texts), or our own lives and observations. For this reason, I believe that students might find writing interesting and invest more time into it because they can bring in their own lives and share it with the readers. However, I still find that it’s difficult for students to write because they are so scared of who is reading and grading their papers, and being wrong. The audience they focus solely on is the teacher, but never on themselves and how they can improve their writing or getting their point across. The advice that Fulwiler gives in the teacher section suggests that students “make the assignment their own” and “try to teach the readers something” and that is great advice, but hard for a high school student who is behind grade level to do. Before students can even start writing, the most important activity they can do is brainstorm. What I like about Fulwiler’s article is that he suggests brainstorming and then eliminating. Most students will not brainstorm and limit themselves to topics or ideas that they find hard to write about. As I teach writing, I see that brainstorming and outlining can become even more important than revising.