I chose a passage near the bottom of page 347. FYI, I'm nowhere close to halfway done, and I'm also not reading the book in order.
Elbow is talking about features of speech that are creeping into language, and he's focused now on second person. In speech, we always have an audience, so using "you" is acceptable. But many English/composition teachers shun the use of "you" in academic writing.
"Students are in a bind: they must learn the tricky and unnatural skill of writing to an audience while not syntactically addressing anyone at all...Yet much school writing goes only to the teacher - whose only job is to judge - so this seldom feels to students like communicating with an actual human...students tend to write as though to no audience." (emphasis is original to the text)
I picked this section because I've been talking with my colleagues a lot about tone and audience in student writing. In fact, we've planned an interdisciplinary "Tone Day" for November 5th (just before the election). We've planned to work on identifying an audience, connecting with the audience through common ground, and making particular word choices to achieve a desired tone. But Elbow reminds me here that working on tone and talking about audience may not be enough.
What if, in the end, I'm still the only person who reads the students' writing? The audience is still inauthentic.
So I'm wondering how I can realistically create an audience of readers for my students in the fall.
Elbow is talking about features of speech that are creeping into language, and he's focused now on second person. In speech, we always have an audience, so using "you" is acceptable. But many English/composition teachers shun the use of "you" in academic writing.
"Students are in a bind: they must learn the tricky and unnatural skill of writing to an audience while not syntactically addressing anyone at all...Yet much school writing goes only to the teacher - whose only job is to judge - so this seldom feels to students like communicating with an actual human...students tend to write as though to no audience." (emphasis is original to the text)
I picked this section because I've been talking with my colleagues a lot about tone and audience in student writing. In fact, we've planned an interdisciplinary "Tone Day" for November 5th (just before the election). We've planned to work on identifying an audience, connecting with the audience through common ground, and making particular word choices to achieve a desired tone. But Elbow reminds me here that working on tone and talking about audience may not be enough.
What if, in the end, I'm still the only person who reads the students' writing? The audience is still inauthentic.
So I'm wondering how I can realistically create an audience of readers for my students in the fall.