G. Berenice, Zaira SQR 6

G. Berenise De La Rosa, Zaira Montellano
ENG 1320/1301. 161
October 3, 2010
SQR 6

Citation: Peter Elbow. “Closing My Eyes as I Speak: An Argument for Ignoring Audience”. College English, Vol. 49 No. 1(Jan., 1987), pp. 50-69.
This article is starting off as explaining on how the author deals with audience, feels about talking or reading to them and how he does it. Peter says that young people have different points of views since they have only written to their teachers. In the limited claim in explains what the audience means to the speaker, whether it is either inviting or enabling. When people think about the audience when they write, they think of more and better things to say. The effects of audience awareness is disturbs or disrupts and thinking without completely blocking it. On a more ambitious claim, ignoring an audience can lead to better writing. As they explained in Flowers article, write-based prose is better than reader-based prose. This section is mainly saying that a writer can do their writing better when they do not think about the reader and just concentrate on what they are writing. There is a third section which is two models of cognitive development which it emphasis on audience awareness probably derives from a cognitive development. As Flower relates writer-based prose to the inability to “decenter” which is characteristic of Piaget’s early stages of development and she relates reader-based prose to later more mature stages of development. What i think this article is mainly explaining is how a writer thinks about an audience and whether it is good to have them or better to just ignore them.

Question:
In page 53, the author concluded that “it’s often difficult to work out new meaning while thinking about readers”. Do you agree with this argument? Please explain.

Response:
We definitely agree, with the authors conclusion. We compared it to when you first assigned us an SQR, we had absoulutly no idea of what you expected from of. To be honest we really werent sure if to turn it in or not, I guess we were afraid to fail the assignment. We really spent hours think of what it was that you were going to look for when greading the whole SQR together. It wasn’t a new meaning, but it was a paper form that us both had never heard about nor ever worked with.