Writing from sources: Does audience matter?

Contextual factors influence the way we speak and write. An audience is central to the rhetorical context and helps to identify the parameters of a writing task. The purpose of this study was to examine whether and how the specification of an audience influenced the summary writing produced by adult English as a Second Language (ESL) writers in a large-scale writing assessment setting. The performance of 205 test takers who completed two writing tasks was compared with respect to audience awareness measured by three aspects of writing: context statements, content, and source attribution. Both tasks required test takers to summarize source information, but they were contrasted with respect to the specification of audience in our analysis. One task was presented without reference to an audience, whereas the other task explicitly instructed test takers to address a reader who was unfamiliar with the sources they would summarize. Of the three aspects of writing, the effect of audience specifications was observed on source attribution and context statements. This was not the case for content when responses between the two tasks were compared. However, all aspects were shown to vary across writing score levels when compared within the writing condition with audience specification.