WRITING TO BE READ - YOUNG WRITERS ABILITY TO DEMONSTRATE AUDIENCE AWARENESS WHEN EVALUATED BY THEIR READERS

This study explores the audience awareness of 30 fifth-grade students when they compose and revise an original text for two audiences-a good third-grade reader and an experienced adult reader-in a realistic transactional writing task. The writing task was designed to reflect the natural writer-audience relationship by allowing the two audiences addressed by the writers (rather than an independent rater or teacher) to evaluate the writers' success in revising their compositions to meet the audiences' needs and expectations. Third-grade and adult readers attempted to identify the audience addressed in two revisions produced by each writer (60 total texts). A test of significance for proportional differences revealed that the fifth graders successfully revised their texts to address the expectations of both audiences. Results also suggest that the fifth graders were more successful addressing the third-grade than the adult audience. Samples of the students' revisions indicate how these young writers perceived and attempted to address the expectations of their readers.