Assessing Audience and Purpose

I think that this is very important information that everyone should no regaurdless of what line of work they are in. Everyone should be able to write knowing whom they are addressing and what their purpose is.

The first and obvious step is determinging what you will be writing about. You want your readers to learn something new and take it with them when they are finished. Knowing your purpose gives you a sense of direction in which you want to write your paper.

After figuring out the purpose of your paper you need to access your audience's needs. When they are through reading your paper there should be no misunderstanding as to what you wanted then to recieve from this.

You may want to ask yourself before you begin writing-

• "Who is my audience?"
• "What do you want your audience to know?"
• "What does your audience know about the subject?
• "Does your format enhance audience understanding?"
• "Do you have more than one audience?"
• "Have you narrowed your topic to what you want your audience to know?"
• "What are your audience's needs in relation to the subject?

When you feel you know enough about your reader you may than begin your writing. You will have an advantage which will result in a better outcome with your audience.

Now you need to consider your context in which you are going to write. The environment or situation are to key factors in chossing your context. It will ultimitely affect how your reader interprets the meaning.

When thinking about the context you may ask-

• "What is your professional relations with your readers and how might that affect the tone, style, and scope of your writing?"
• "What mediums to do your readers prefer-memo, letter, report, or e-mail?"
• "What specific factors or values are important to your readers company?"
• "What is the corporate culture in which your readers work. ?"
• "What are the professional relationships among your readers?"

The process following this would be generating, gathering, and recording ideas and facts. It's what we like to call brainstorming. A good way to start off this process is to think about your own knowledge of the subject and personal experiences that you may have encountered. Just start listing as many ideas as you can think of. Later you can go back through and pick out the most important ones.

Brainstorming may not bring you all the information you need. Therefore there are other means of finding your information such as the library that provides books, articles, reference works, and other material for you to use. The internet is also a popular way of doing research these days.

When you believe you have all this down you can begin to downsize it to only the actual information you need and will use in your writing. You must determine your scope of how much you need to get your point across to your audience.

Once you have narrowed it down you will take the remaining information and organize it. As you put your ideas together on paper continue to move them around seeing if you need to add something you forgot and delete more information.

Now you are ready to begin writing. Begin by writing a draft to get all your ideas down on paper. When finished you may want to set it aside and doing something else to get your mind off of your work. Maybe even wait until the next morning to review it. This way you're working with a fresh mind and you are more focused. You may also want to have someone else check over your work.

Following these short easy steps is a sure way to make you a good writer. You will feel like you have accomplished teaching your audience new and have the confidence that they will walk away remembering what you said.