Intention and Audience: The Genesis of Communication

I'm still reading and thinking with Maja Wilson in Reimagining Writing Assessment : From Scales to Stories.

Intention and audience are the genesis of writing. In my own writings intention and audience are the only inspiration to compose. Is that true for school sponsored writing? Where students are told what their intentions are to be and for whom the audience is absent? When I approach student writers, am I making the assumption that they care about the topic? Do I assume they understand or visualize the audience responding to their work? So abstract.

Wilson reminds us all that meaning not only drives the form(medium) but also the desire to compose (communicate) at all. On page 58 of the text, she created a call out box that describes "A Writer's DNA: Decision-Making Relationships Between Intention, Medium, and Audience" (Wilson, 2018). I have adapted the box, maintaining her language with the italicized font to adapt this thinking for a student resource. Not only do we as teachers need to be aware of the origin of writing, but we need to help students become aware of the wellsprings of thought that can flow through their pens to paper so that others can row through the current of ideas they provide for the reader. (Recognize the reference to Gustav? "What a heavy oar the pen is, and what a strong current ideas are to row in!)

Again, Wilson's work is a practical application of feedback. Hattie and Timperley (2006) speak of SELF-EXTENDING Feedback. At least that's what I call it because it connects to what we teach in reading. We want students to have self-extending systems in place for decoding so that they can read increasingly complex tasks. Hattie and Timperley call this level, SELF-REGULATION, or CONDITIONAL. In other words, how does a writer evaluate and sustain the writing act for himself? How does the student "monitor his own learning process" to continue working and growing and writing (Hattie, 2012, p. 134). We have to teach writers the metacognitive awareness and executive behaviors required to give feedback to themselves.

As before, I will transform Wilson's words into an instructional tool, followed by an evaluation of the levels of feedback implied by the questions. Collectively, I believe that the questions serve as an example of how we might teach students to apply the SELF-EXTENDING levels of feeedback for themselves and their peers. 

Relationship between the writer’s intention and the medium:

• The text expresses and transforms what is in my mind.
• What do I know?
• What have I read?
• What have I seen?
• What have I felt?
• What has happened to me?
• What do I wish to happen?
• How have I used the questions above to take what is in my mind to express and transform my thoughts into marks?
• The text does not match what is in my head.
• In what ways?
• How will I respond?
• My meaning and intention change as I see what I have composed.
• In what ways?
• How will I respond? (Adapted from Wilson, 2018, p. 58)

In this first excerpt, Wilson (2018) helps create a scaffold for the writer to examine the product, or TASK, of composing as well as the PROCESS he has used do so. The what questions help the student evaluate the TASK. The HOW questions prompt the writer to evaluate the PROCESS he has used to compose that were effective as well as those PROCESSES that might need improvement with revision. By examining what has worked well, the writer can name the features that can be used in the next writing performance. By identifying areas in the composition that don't work so well, the writer is alerted to problems that might have been missed and trigger a search for more effective solutions, strategies, skills, information, etc. 

Relationship between the writer and his audience:

• I want someone else to look at the page and see what is in my mind.
• I want to know what someone else sees when they look at what I have created.
• I want to keep this for myself. (Adapted from Wilson, 2018, p. 58)

Wilson now provides a scaffold to help the writer become more explicitly aware of the impact he wishes to have on the audience - even if that audience is the writer himself/herself. Conscious awareness and attention to audience brings purpose and context to the composition. By seeking this feedback from self or others, the writer can then evaluate the impact of the product, the TASK.

Relationship between the writer’s intention, the medium, and his audience:

• I can make changes on the page to better show someone else what is in my mind.
• In what ways?
• How will I go about doing so?
• I can make changes on the page to better show myself what is in my mind.
• In what ways?
• How will I go about doing so?

Wilson ties all of the elements together with this set of questions and considerations. First, the writer must consider the TASK*. Does he have the information and skills to revise the composition? Then the writer can select from existing schema or search for more effective PROCESSES that will help improve the writing in ways that fit his audience, intentions, and medium.

*Note: In some instances, the TASK is the text/composition itself. The creation of the text is the purpose. In other instances, the TASK is the knowledge and skills required to improve the text/composition. The distinction lies in understanding that TASK level feedback is about the product. Was the product correct or not? In writing, that can be the text as a whole. It can also be the revisions and additional information.