In-class activity. Liz Tinelli.
Overview: This small-group activity invites students to think carefully about how sentence-level choices (wording, tone, detail) change when writing for a specific audience and purpose. By adapting a single factual sentence to different communicative situations, students practice tailoring style and content to meet rhetorical goals.
Uses: Helps students see how audience expectations and purpose influence diction, tone, and emphasis, and works well when introducing rhetorical awareness, especially in courses where students must adjust technical or factual information for different readers.
How do I use it in class? I find this activity to be useful as a warm-up for assignments that require adapting content to a non-expert or specialized audience. I prepare 12 index cards in advance with six audience cards and six purpose cards (feel free to adopt your own!):
- Each group draws one audience card and one purpose card and is assigned a sentence. Here are the ones I use based on my theme:
- Audiences: Children, government officials, employees, environmental activists, vacation planners, college students
- Purposes: To persuade, entertain, reassure, educate, warn, excite
- Sentences:
A. The park has been redesigned to include new walking trails.
B. The smartphone has new features designed to improve battery life.
C. This historic building was restored to preserve its original architectural details.
D. This eco-friendly packaging breaks down naturally within three months of disposal.
E. The new highway expansion is expected to reduce traffic congestion by 30%.
2. Groups rewrite the sentence to fit their assigned audience and purpose.
3. Other groups guess the intended audience and purpose based on the rewrite.
(Variation) The next group adds a second sentence, extending the message to fit their guess.