Audience Awareness in EFL Writers: A Preliminary Study at English Education Study Program University of Jambi

Abstract

As a mode of communication, writing should be viewed as representing a dialog between the writers and their readers. This view of writing as a social process (e.g. Hyland, 2003) advocates that writers should try to accommodate their readers’ interests, needs, expectations, etc., in their writings. This concept called “Audience Awareness”, is very crucial to writing instructions, and has been considered as a writing skill that has to be mastered by skilled writers (Clark, 2003; Hyland, 2003). However, apart from somewhat vague instructions for the learners to “consider your readers when writing”, this notion is relatively rarely discussed and studied, particularly in Indonesian context. This preliminary study aims at investigating audience awareness as perceived by Indonesian EFL writers. The primary data of this descriptive qualitative study were collected through interviews to 12 students of English Education Study Program, University of Jambi, selected purposively by applying maximum variation sampling strategy. The data were analysed thematically. Four salient themes emerging from the study, i.e.: (1) Vague awareness of the audience, (2) (in)ability to address the audience, (3) effects of real readers to audience awareness, and (4) lack of instruction in audience awareness, as well as their pedagogical implications are discussed in depth in this paper.