Today we are going to discuss purpose, audience, and tone and how these concepts apply to academic writing. First we will talk about purpose and how different assignments have different goals. You can often figure out the purpose of an essay by its title, and we will practice this.
The academic audience is a hypothetical set of readers that your paper is directed to. There are certain characteristics of the academic audience that you will have to consider when you write. Your papers in this class should be written for a general audience, which means you have to make sure you explain everything and use terms that they will be able to understand. We will look at two examples of papers to show you how you should and shouldn’t write for a general audience.
Lastly, we will talk about academic tone. The “tone” of an academic paper involves the kind of language we use in our writing. Every situation requires a different tone. You speak differently from how you write, and even in writing there are different rules for what is appropriate and acceptable. You don’ t write the same in a paper as you do on Facebook. We will talk about what to avoid and how to make our writing more objective. Here is a good website resource on academic tone.
For homework, continue editing your diagnostic essay. For this revision, focus on your making sure you’ re thinking about your audience and controlling your academic tone. Your purpose should be clear as well.
