Audience

A good sense of audience is one of the most important factors in writing well.  Inexperienced writers often write as if they do not really expect anyone else to read what they have written.

Robert Keith Miller, Motives for Writing, page 3

Many of the papers that you write for college classes may require you to think about two audiences: the actual audience (your instructor and perhaps your classmates) and the target audience (the people who would ideally read your paper).  Consider, for example, this sample assignment from Motives for Writing (the current English 1101/1102 textbook):

Write an evaluation of the food served on your campus that would help visitors learn where to go and what to order.  (269)

When students respond to this assignment, they are clearly expected to address a target audience of campus visitors.  Even though the students' actual readers (professor and classmates) know where the Bears' Den is and what it serves, they'll write as if their readers do not know the SSU campus.

The Longman Concise Companion gives a number of helpful ideas for analyzing and responding to your target audience in Chapter 3, section c (pages 16-17).