Literacy narrative audience & purpose exploration

1. Literacy Narrative
Audience & Purpose Exploration
Who is mostly likely to be interested in
what you have to say?

2. Instructions
As you work through these slides, take 2-3 minutes for each one. Allow
yourself to make as detailed a brainstormed list as possible. This extra effort up
front will make your decisions about your public artifact much easier later on.

3. Audience exploration
• What is/are the main theme(s) of your literacy narrative? What is it mostly
about?
• Who might possibly be interested in hearing about this theme and/or these
events? Why? Brainstorm a list!

4. Purpose exploration
Choose at least three of the potential audiences you have identified. For each
one, explore:
• What would you like your audience to do/think/feel differently after reading
your narrative? What do you want them to think or do differently? What kind
of action do you want to enable them to take?

5. Think it over …
• Which audience is the most important to you?
• Which purpose seems the most urgent, necessary, or even personally
important to you?
• Which audience/purpose idea do you just seem to like the most?

6. Articulation of purpose
• Keeping in mind your ideas from the previous slide, please choose one
potential audience and write out your purpose in a clear, direct sentence:
“After reading my literacy narrative, I want my audience to …”
Keep this purpose in mind as you make all other decisions regarding your
literacy narrative!

7. Audience exploration: Values
• What kinds of things does your audience value? What is important to them?
What do they care about? (These are the kinds of things you’ll want to
highlight in your narrative!)

8. Audience exploration: Language preference and
register/style
• What language(s) does your audience speak? Does your audience code-
switch/translanguage? Which language and/or language practices would they
be most receptive and responsive to? What level of formality? What kind of
style/tone? (Use this knowledge of your audience as you are writing your
narrative!)

9. Audience exploration: Negative audience
constraints
• What kinds of things might be “turn offs” for your audience? Ideas?
Formats? Vocabulary/style? (These are things you might consider either
avoiding or building up to slowly in your narrative.)

10. Making choices for your audience and purpose
• With your chosen audience and purpose in mind (including their values and
the positive and negative constraints you just explored), consider what
choices will be most effective in getting them to meet your purpose.

11. Examples
• Which specific examples from your literacy development would be effective
to use for your audience and purpose?
• (Be sure to keep your chosen theme/ideas in mind – the details still need to
be relevant to your overall theme, not just a random or chronological list of
events.)

12. Dialogue
• Which bits of dialogue (conversation) would be effective to use for your
audience and purpose?
• (Be sure these dialogues are relevant to your overall theme, not just a random
insertion of conversation.)

13. Sensory details
• What kinds of sensory details (sights, smells, sounds, feelings) would be
effective to use for your audience and purpose?
• (Again, be sure these sensory details are relevant to your overall theme, not
just a random insertion that would feel distracting.)