STEP 6: Define Your Audience For Academic
Level and Knowledge Level
Before you start to write, you must identify your audience. Who will be reading your paper? If your audience is going to be your college professor, you will write at a different level than if you are writing an editorial for your school newspaper or an article for a children’s magazine. First, identify the academic level of your audience and then plan to use a writing style and level that will be appropriate to that audience. Remember to be realistic. If your audience is your college professor, for example, don’t think that you automatically must use puffed-up, important-sounding language. Usually, the best way to get your message across and make a good impression is to use language that promotes you as a plain-talking, common-sense, down-to-earth (but well-informed) person. To assess the academic level of your audience, ask “who is my reader and what level of writing will be appropriate for that reader’?
Once you have identified the academic level of your audience, you must identify the knowledge level of your audience. Remember, a person’s academic level does not necessarily reflect a person’s knowledge level. Your English professor may have a Ph.D. in Education and Linguistics, but he may know virtually nothing about cystic fibrosis, a serious lung disease that is always fatal. If your paper is on cystic fibrosis, you will have to balance your paper so that the academic level will be appropriate for a professor but where the knowledge and content level will be understandable to someone who has no knowledge of the topic. To assess the knowledge level, ask “what does my reader know or not know about the topic, what experiences or background do they have in relation to the topic and why might they be interested in the topic”?