Dear Colleague,
As a recent or veteran academician, you have been hired to teach students to think and act based on their increased understanding of your content area. You will likely assign these students to show what they know by preparing a paper, presentation, or product reflecting their deeper, broader, and erudite knowledge. Your assignment may ask them to present an argument on one side or another of a contemporary issue that is special to the student. The students should show they know their audience.
Because this kind of communication is designed to change thinking or behavior, assign students to describe at least three people who could be in this imagined audience:
- someone who opposes the student’s position,
- someone who is neutral and
- someone who is supportive but has not yet acted.
During class, have students humanize these listeners by writing nine sentences based on their audience members’ self-identification. Have the students list
- gender,
- (age,
- race,
- culture,
- education,
- economic status,
- religion, and whether the sample person is a
- longtime resident or someone who recently moved to the area where the student’s issue is set.
The nine sentences should state three reasons why each kind of listener may not believe, care, or act … three reasons for each kind of listener. If time permits, have students locate and copy and into a single document a graphic, photo or drawing of each of three persons and have that page showing when the student is writing. Seeing is believing!
Then, you project the graphic below and share that successful communicators consider the head, heart, and pocket of their listeners, a la Aristotle’s ethos, pathos, and logos. As students reflect on the Apostle Paul’s letters, political speeches, sales pitches, homilies, khutbahs, and sermons by religious leaders, your learners will see that these speakers make such appeals in their calls for action.
Next, invite students to write six to nine more sentences expressing how they must conduct research to find valid evidence in their presentations that appeals to the head, heart, and pocket of each of the varied members of their imagined audience. Sometimes, the same evidence or argument can work for more than one. That’s the reason for the six rather than nine statements. But, require at least two specific arguments for each type of audience: against, neutral or supportive of the issue of the student’s position.
Once these two tasks are completed, students will be ready to conduct their research. Using approved source they can seek valid facts, heart-rending stories, and expert opinions to appeal to the heads, hearts, and pockets of the audience the students have described. Simplifying this ungraded pre-writing step will lead to more sensitivity in student thinking, more systematic research, and more sophisticated presentations as papers, products, or performances. You and the students are likely to experience more success along the way.
Please get a copy of these textbooks for further details and the next steps for pre-writing and drafting quality college-level communication and other in-class activities to better prepare students for out-of-class work on their own or with classmates in publications designed for teaching adults. Planning with Purposes focuses more on rhetoric and Empowering Learning on reading to write to be read.
Anna
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Anna J. Small Roseboro,
National Board Certified Teacher
Writing Coach
Grand Rapids, Michigan
California Association of Teachers of English
Conference on English Education
Conference on English Leadership
Michigan Council of Teachers of English
National Council of Teachers of English
ajroseboro@gmail.com
http://teachingenglishlanguagearts.com/
“If a child can’t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.” ~Ignacio ‘Nacho’ Estrada~