Teachers of writing know the importance of audience in motivating a writer, focusing a draft, evoking students’ best efforts, and infusing classroom assignments with relevance. From a student peer reviewer to a high school newspaper to a national or global student literary journal, opportunities to connect youth voices with readers beyond their teacher can fuel and foster students’ literacy and identity development.
So, too, do professional writers benefit from this sense of readership; writing teacher Pat Schneider writes in her craft book Writing Alone and with Others:
“John McPhee has said that every book he ever wrote began with the words ‘Dear Mother.’ The first words of my book… were ‘Dear Moya.’ Neither McPhee’s ‘Dear Mother’ nor my ‘Dear Moya’ appear in the published book, but look at all that it accomplishes for the writing: intimacy of voice, a relaxed and natural tone, an unthreatening specific audience, a natural flow of information or plot, and a writer blissfully forgetting anyone else who might ever read those words!” (2003, p. 3).
Note that this practice of dedication is one way to think about and invoke an intended audience—the above examples are intimate, though the practice may extend to, say, a town government official for an opinion editorial, a college admissions officer for a Common Application essay, or a historical figure for an epistolary poem that compares present with past. Keeping in mind the persona of each recipient—their background, experience, expectations, preferences—helps writers tailor their technique and message for greatest impact.
Yet it can be challenging, amid the many demands that tug on teachers’ time, to create meaningful opportunities for students to liaise with real-world audiences for every writing assignment. Perhaps they have opportunities, in summative assessment, to showcase their work at a reading or rally, submit for publication, or present about their process, but what about informal writing assignments and formative assessments? How can we provide a sense of purpose for these more routine writing tasks?
As emerging artificial intelligence (AI) technologies enter the realm of education, it’s worth considering whether and how they might provide an answer, or at least a playground for experimentation and simulation that might augment (though importantly, not replace the importance of) real external audiences in writing instruction.
When students practice thinking about the underlying purpose of their writing (e.g. to convince, to educate, to evoke a specific emotion, to advocate for social change), they’re better able to identify an intended reader; in other words, knowing their why leads to their who — the persona described above, who would be most impacted by their work. Invite students to learn more about, and to interact with, that persona through an AI simulation. They can prompt a tool like ChatGPT to respond to their draft as if they were a fellow teenager, a politician, a literary figure, or a famous author. Be sure students prompt the AI, not only to respond in the voice and tone of the intended audience member, but to provide desired feedback. This allows for metacognition, as students must consider what they most wish to focus on in their draft—from diction to structural organization, allusion to humor—and to weigh the priorities of their audience with those of their own visions as writers.
Sometimes, one’s intended audience is most likely to be sympathetic to one’s cause, or rapt by one’s creativity—for example, kindergarten students exploring a children’s book, or patients impacted by a chronic illness reading an opinion editorial calling for more research funding. But, inevitably, and especially when writing for adult audiences in the public sphere, writers will always also encounter naysayers—those who disagree with, challenge, criticize, or judge one’s message, writing, or motivations. Sometimes, as in writing for social change, those naysayers may also be one’s intended readers.
As a result, writers must learn to cope with these voices—to sift through them and determine which to consider, which to ignore. When writing for the purpose of argumentation, such as with Op-Eds or perspective pieces, having opportunities to anticipate and refute counterarguments in advance of sharing one’s work can strengthen the central thrust of one’s piece. Invite students to prompt AI tools to embody such a naysayer, providing counterpoints to the main arguments of their essays, emulating a reader who (respectfully) disagrees with their drafts so that they may gain practice interfacing with a differing perspective; consider how to hone their argument and make it more convincing; and revise their work, making it stronger for its debut with real-world readers.
Practicing writers don’t only share written work with readers; they also speak about that work, and their artistic process and intentions, in interviews, public speaking events, and more. Thus, speaking and listening are not only core competencies outlined in Common Core State Standards in the U.S., but required skill sets to hone if one hopes to pursue writing beyond high school. For a practice run, invite students to use the voice capabilities now available through ChatGPT to have a conversation with an AI persona, emulating a relevant scenario: an interview with Ira Glass or Oprah Winfrey, an interactive audience Q&A at a book talk, a panel discussion about a relevant topic (like nature writing, or the use of a certain literary device in fiction, or the power of writing to make social change). Of course, it’s ideal to utilize these practice runs to build toward a real speaking opportunity, like an oral presentation to the class, a panel talk in a school assembly, or a poetry open mic.
Building on this idea of using AI to support students’ development of speaking and listening competencies, you might also invite students to position AI as the persona of a potential source in a writing project—for example, an interview subject with whom they may speak for a journalism article, or a subject matter expert they might interview for an informative essay. This provides an opportunity for students to craft interview questions, try them out, and revise them as needed—by making them more open-ended, for example, or more thematically focused—in advance of their interfacing with real, human sources. Such interactions involve what educator and writer David Rockower refers to as “dialogic vulnerability”; providing practice can quell student anxieties about that vulnerability while enhancing their perspective-taking skills, their “theory of mind,” or ability to intuit the thoughts and feelings of their sources.
These are just several ways to leverage AI to enhance a sense of audience in writing instruction; as tools and technologies continue to emerge, we invite you to experiment with these and other strategies, and to share your experiences by reaching out to educators@writetheworld.org — we look forward to learning alongside you how best to support young writers through meaningful AI instruction.