Review the learning objectives for this course. What's one thing you've learned that connects to an objective and to your future job? Also, what sorts of training do you wish you could have / could HAVE had?

This course has taught me a great deal about the history of composition studies as well as how to teach composition to students. Although I don’t immediately plan to teach after completion of this degree, this is valuable information that will assist me throughout my career. All of the learning objectives for this course are important, but the one that I have learned the most about is audience awareness. In this course, we’ve learned to analyze audience and purpose in rhetorical situations and make appropriate choices.

Audience awareness has been a part of my vocabulary and factors into my practical application in the workplace. In my experience, audience awareness is utilized when writing for a client or customer. Composition programs worry if the lessons they teach their students will be retained and used in future workplace situations. I believe much of their worry isn’t warranted as today, more than ever, audience/user centered awareness is understood. For example, I worked for an automobile insurance company that valued making the customer’s experience a pleasant one their first priority. All portions of the customer experience, including letters sent out about coverage, website design, and documents related to accident claims were customer focused. We often asked, “How will the customer consume this information? Is it useful to them? Will it lead them to remain a customer?” Without taking these questions into consideration, the insurance company would not have been able to gain new customers or retain the current customer base. This was the first company I worked for after completing my undergraduate degree and I was excited to find that audience awareness was truly practiced in the workplace. Now that I reflect on my experiences at this company, I realize that many companies miss the mark where audience awareness is concerned. They often have no connection with their customers and can only speculate on what the customer expects. Now that I am back in the classroom, I am glad to see that audience awareness is still perceived as being important in the workplace. Without it, I suppose it would seem like employees are talking at the customer instead of having a conversation with them.

For this week’s blog, I also wanted to talk about the question Dr. Rice asked about training. If we are discussing training as a document instructor in the composition program, my wish is that I would have had a chance to review student writing prior to starting the position. My expectations of the type of writing I would see and my response to this writing are very different from the reality. On the job training is definitely a common practice, but in this composition program, I think it is a disservice to the student, as well as the instructors. In my case, I haven’t reviewed academic writing in over 6 years; instead, my most recent experiences have been with workplace communications, which are very different from student essays. Having an idea of what is expected of me before grading “live” student documents would have been very helpful.