Writing and Publishing for a Wider Audience

The Need for More Students to Write and Publish for Larger Audiences

Despite all of the benefits of publishing previously mentioned, in many cases students write only to complete assignments in school (Ensio & Boxeth, 2000). They continue explaining the impact of graded assignments on student writers:

Finished compositions are handed in, graded, and returned to the student. Grades recorded in the grade book encompass student ability and measure how successful students are at following directions and mastering expected skills. Students who fear that they may receive low grades, are hesitant and rarely take risks or experiment with new ways of expressing
themselves. Grades become signs of approval or disapproval and influence the way children perceive themselves as writers. They also send messages to students, telling them that they are either good or bad writers. Students’ self-esteem is affected by their performance, and those with lower self-esteem are less likely to take risks, write on their own, or develop a love for writing (Bright 1995). (6)

College Professor, Robert C. Wess (1980) writes “(To wean) students away from writing merely to please the teacher, (it) create in them a growing awareness of what makes writing work in larger contexts” (1). This indicates that when students begin writing in the primary grades, they are taught that the teacher is the main and only audience. They learn to write for his or her benefit alone. To prevent this from happening, it is necessary to generate a new goal, one that teaches young children a new definition of “audience”. Audience ranges from a single reader (i.e. the teacher) to a community full of diverse individuals. Teaching children that people in the community around them take pleasure in reading their work is extremely valuable. This can change both their perception of worth and understanding of what makes writing “good”. (7)

According to teacher Christine Pederson (1993), when students perceive that the teacher is the sole audience, the result is an “arid wasteland of purposeless sentences and paragraphs” (Dollieslager 1993). Empty assignments are neither real nor meaningful to young writers. . . . (7)

Certain trends and results from past studies demonstrate that publishing is a concrete way to de-emphasize grades and initiate change. The literature strongly supports positive changes
in student perceptions and increases in motivation to write. Students stop performing for the teacher and start writing for pleasure, personal expression, and reflection. In addition, students gain control of their writing. In classrooms where students publish, they learn to appreciate having freedom to choose what to modify and how to improve their writing as they engage in the steps of the writing process. Students who delight in opportunities to share their work, and writers who focus on audience interpretation and understanding are likely to result. Supporting evidence is found in class examples where students have produced multiple copies of their work, written multiple works, spent more time revising, and started asking questions about how to enhance their writing sample (Ehrenberg, 1983). (7)

Publications Help Develop Student Writers’ Sense of Audience

In writing for publication, student writers are writing according to purpose and for an intended audience. The literature clearly states the powerful role that publication plays in helping young writers learn to write and continue writing for an audience. When writers go public, they must have an audience—not just the teacher (Simic, 1993). After all, the reason we write is to communicate (NEAP Framework, 1998), and our expanded audience gives us the purpose for writing. Students come to realize that writing is a serious and worthy endeavor through sharing their work with a wider audience. King & Stovall (1992) write, “Publishing, like performing a play, is a tangible form of communication,” and students understand this.

Beginning in kindergarten, children can understand that they can use writing to communicate with a reader and then write in a manner and tone appropriate to their audience (Strange, 1988). For example, young children often write letters to friends and family members in ways that show they understand to whom they are writing and in a way that is most effective in communicating to their audience.

Publishing students’ writing is a good way to help young people write for different audiences (Strange, 1988). Ms. Strange writes about a study saying, “Hubbard (1985) found that publishing had beneficial results for second graders’ perceptions of audience. In her study, students who published their writing viewed the readers’ reactions as important and helpful. ‘When people read my book it’s like they help me. When I read it, I get more ideas for another story.’” (660)

As Ensio & Boxeth (2000) explain, young writers are more willing to work through each stage of the writing process when they know they are writing for an expanded audience:

Great care is given to prewriting, revising, and editing (Kellaher, 1999). From her own experience, Maryfrancis Wagner reported an increase in student enthusiasm when handed the opportunity to communicate to a wider audience. Students set higher expectations for themselves and stated that they needed to revise their papers more. Both of these facts are evidence of positive outcomes generated through changes in perspectives about audience (Wagner, 1985). (10)

Dean (2000) elaborates on how the drive to write for an audience and be published makes even young people willing to work hard in the stages of the writing process:

When we consider why most of us write, the reasons tend to focus on expressing ourselves, particularly to an audience. We want our voices to be heard, our thoughts given substance and weight. We want someone to know and care about what we have to say. In essence, we want to be published. Because of that, we are willing to spend time with our thoughts, to wrestle with them as we try to shape them into a form that will have meaning for others, and we are willing to revise/reshape/rethink what we write so that it becomes more effective. My experience tells me that the same desires can motivate my students to have similarly engaging experiences with writing. If they are able to publish, they are often more interested in engaging in the messy, challenging, rewarding process of writing instead of spitting out something to give to the teacher. (42)

Bringing Students into the World of Authorship

In the literature, there is discussion on the effect that publishing had in changing students’ perspectives and bringing them into the world of authorship. When they see their name in print, read their text aloud, or see others reading their words, only then do students know and feel what it is like being an author.

Graves (1984) comments on how classroom publishing helps students actualize the concept of authorship:

They begin the long process of advancing toward a richer understanding of the concept [authorship] by doing what writers and readers do: As writers they struggle to put their thoughts on paper and they talk about these thoughts with other writers. . . . The author concept follows the publishing cycle in the classroom. As the children take part in the publishing cycle from drawing, to writing, to the making of a book, and sharing it with the class they begin to understand the chains of events that lead to authorship. (180)

When published, students begin to understand and experience what it means to be authors. Calkins (1994) discusses ways in which publication affects students as authors:

The moment of publication makes each author feel like an insider in the world of authorship. What an important lesson this is for those of us who work with young people! Publication matters, and it matters because it inducts us into the writerly life. Publication, then, is the beginning, not the culmination of the writing process. Publication does not mean that the process is over, that children can now gaze at their monuments. Instead, publication inducts us as insiders into the world of authorship. (266)

Our children will see themselves in adramatically new light if they are published authors. Because publication can provide such perspective and tap such energy, I believe it is one of the first priorities in our classrooms. (268)

In agreement with Graves and Calkins, Ensio & Boxeth (2000) state that writing to an audience results in beneficial changes to student writers:

. . . Studies show that students need to have the opportunities to write for “real” audiences. When these opportunities arise, there are many positive results. One includes a change in student
roles. Student perspectives are transformed and their understanding about writing, writers, audiences, and what it means to share their work with others is given new meaning. In effect, students become authors and creators. They become editors in the writing workshop and then share as storytellers or presenters. (10-11)

Publishing students in classroom or school publications gives a young person the feeling that he or she is a “published author” (Kellaher, 1999; Calkins, 1994), and the teacher also sees them as student authors. Such new perspectives can lead to greater involvement, ownership, and valuing of writing and the writing process, especially when their product is something valued and recognized by their community (Schmidt, 1992).

Nancie Atwell (1998) further explains why young writers having a sense of audience is vital:

A sense of audience—the knowledge that someone will read what they have written—is crucial to young writers. Kids write with purpose and passion when they know that people they care about reaching will read what they have to say. . . . (489)

Conner (2000) adds, “. . . It seems to be the certainty of audience—entwined with a particular means of publication—that is crucial to motivating young writers to act as writers.” Students do not need to just write stories, essays, or poetry for publication. Students can include their work in a variety of publication (e.g., cookbooks, calendars, ethnographies, and so on.). Their words can reach an audience in many different ways. For example, a Vietnamese student of Chris Weber’s spent weeks writing and revising the script to her play that was an reenactment of her escape from Vietnam. Later her play was performed before a community audience, and her efforts were repaid with applause.

Perhaps, Beers (2000), best describes the power of publication and audience. Upon seeing and hearing one of her students who ran screaming with excitement into her classroom showing her and the class that her editorial had been published in The Houston Post, Ms. Beers writes:

Suddenly I understood something about writing that I’ll admit I really hadn’t fully understood before: Writing must be for something, for someone. There must be an audience—not the contrived, make-believe audience that accompanies what we hope are well-designed writing assignments, but a real audience that wants to read the words, agree or disagree with the thoughts, learn from the ideas the author sets forth. With that audience come a power; a confidence within the writer that perhaps is never found in any other way. While middle schoolers are often filled with bravado, they more often lack self-assurance; publishing their words offer them one more way to gain confidence, one more way to be heard in a world they often believe never hears them, one more way to have a voice that is not silenced with mean stares, shrugged shoulders, unapproachable cliques, or perceived intolerance. Indeed, publishing can become an important first step in helping students find their voice. (4-5)

Publication Helps Develop the Element of Voice

Elbow (2002) comments on the value of publication in helping young writers develop voice in their writing:

. . .Let me say a word about how the publication of student writing helps me to teach students about something I’ve long explored and cared about—but which is slippery and complex:
voice in writing. When all the students have copies of class magazines in their hands, it’s much easier to explore the mysterious fact that silent words can “have a voice”—and, in addition, to learn how the voice in a piece of writing tends to have a powerful effect on whether readers like it or resist and see faults in it. . . . (6)

. . .The publication of student writing makes an ideal forum for discussing this crucial matter of voice in writing. When we look in a mirror, we can’t help asking “How do I look?” When we see our writing in a publication, we can’t help asking, “How do I sound?”

When we help our students publish their writing and think about how they sound on paper, this is a big piece of the larger movement I’m trying to explore in this essay: the democratization of writing through publication. (8)