Home Teaching Guides Commenting On Student Writing Set up a Professional Audience for the Writing Assignment

Introduction

Myths and Realties

When Not to Respond

Designing Writing Assignments

Commenting: Margins and End

Commenting on Drafts

Rubrics

Helping Students Learn Editing

Professional Audience

Editing and Credibility

Editing and Readablity

Helping Students Learn to Fix Errors

Overview of Rhetorical Context

Discipline Specific Resources

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Authors & Contributors

Set up a Professional Audience for the Writing Assignment

Even though they might be dismissive of you because you're a teacher, students rarely are so flippant about giving shoddy work to potential employers. Most students have heard the horror stories (urban legend or not) about the person highly qualified for a job whose letter of application went into the wastebasket because of a typo.

If you raise the stakes for writers by setting a professional context for their writing - submission to a journal, a stakeholder audience, or a potential employer - then students are much more likely to care about the final product. So try building in an audience other than the teacher for your writing assignments.