Teaching audience analysis to the technical student

Abstract

Teaching audience analysis, as practiced in a technical writing course for engineering students, is discussed. Audience analysis is described as the task of defining the audience for a particular piece of writing and determining those characteristics of the audience which constrain the writer and effect reception of the message. A mature technical writing style that shows the tension produced when a text is written to be read and understood is considered in terms of audience analysis. Techniques include: (1) conveying to students the concept that a reader with certain expectations exist, (2) team teaching to preserve the context of a given technical discipline, and (3) assigning a technical report that addresses a variety of readers, thus establishing the complexity of audience oriented writing.