How to address the audience in your writing

Because you will not be talking to them in person, it is at first a one-way communication, transfer of knowledge, giving information, but in an slightly informal manner.

People are now used to seeing videos from experts talking straight at them, even in writing, the teaching text is directed to them, like a personal letter, some personal learning.

This is reflected in the way you write (in this learning unit, we tend to address you, as we just did in this unit and the preceding ones.

In most online learning situations, this dialogue becomes real in forums, were your tutor will respond to questions and comment on your responses.

Mrs Pencil would now like to look at this in more detail.

Exercises:

Go back to the story you wrote about a cooking a dish or making a toy, or growing a plant. If you were now to teach someone how to cook that dish, or to make that toy, how would you explain it? To do this in an informal manner, take one of the personas you have created in the previous section, bring up their image on your computer, and imagine you are talking to them in person, face to face. You could tape yourself, and then transcribe what you have said. The structure of the text may need to be changed (maybe you started at one point, but you now realise you should start at another point – this will be part of editing), but overall, you probably are using the right tone of voice in your writing. You might have to practice this – it is not easy to let go of the ideas we have of what ‘proper writing’ is. The ultimate test though is that your text, your writing, should sound like you.