Objective: In three days, all of you will be able to analyze a published essay for audience, purpose, and tone as a result of teacher modeling and guided practice.
On day one and two, we will review what we learned about voice, audience, and purpose. I will then explain that just like our language gave us hints to audience and purpose, published writers' language does the same thing. I'll pass out "Can 35 Million Book Buyers Be Wrong? Yes." by Harold Bloom, an article arguing that the Harry Potter books are not good literature and subtly disparaging its readers. We will read the article together once, and then I will model how I begin to determine audience and purpose. For example, I may start with looking at where the article was published:
The Wall Street Journal
. I will talk about who reads that, and also discuss the concept that one can have a primary audience and a secondary audience at the same time. Bloom starts the essay with, "Taking arms against Harry Potter, at this moment, is to emulate Hamlet taking arms against a sea of troubles. By opposing the sea, you won't end it. The Harry Potter epiphenomenon will go on, doubtless for some time, as J. R. R. Tolkien did, and then wane." I might say how Hamlet, written by Shakespeare, was very ineffective in his inaction against his troubles. I'll define "epiphenomenon" and say who J.R.R. Tolkien was. I'll explain how the one thing I already know about the audience is that they are people who are well-read and would know these allusions and vocabulary. I will also talk about how Bloom's voice is coming across to me, the facial expressions I'm intimating he's have while reading this. About half-way through the article I'll invite students to help me. Once we've finished, I'll hand out a list of purposes for writing and students will pick one or two they think fits Bloom's purpose. We'll end the class with determining audience and purpose.
On day three, together on the overhead, we'll write a response paper (1-2 pages) explaining our choice, going back into the text to use examples to show how we arrived at our conclusions.
Over the next few days or so, students will practice analyzing a published essay for audience and purpose, writing response papers that emulate the one we wrote together.