AUDIENCE ANALYSIS WORKSHOP

PAGE 5: AUDIENCE KNOWLEDGE
What does your audience already know about the subject?
What does your audience already know about the subject?

What is your audiences' educational background, particularly regarding your subject? Is it high level (e.g. experts and technicians)? Is it mid-level (e.g. managers, technicians with nearby experience, or general readers with some background with the subject)? Is is low level (e.g. readers with no idea what-so-ever about your topic)?

What experience does your audience have with the ideas and concepts you plan to present? Will the audience be more interested in practical application details or theory?

What background and explanation of terms will you need to supply for your audience? Will the audience want a glossary of terms? Or will the audience expect you to use abbreviations and technical jargon?

What does your audience understand of the importance of the information you have to present? Does the audience know why they should read the document?

What does your audience know that provides you with a starting point for building the audience's knowledge?

What questions will your audience ask?
Summarize what you know about your audiences' knowledge that will influence your choices of format, register, and content (particularly how you will phrase information that they already know but that needs to be stated).
Summarize what you know about your audiences' knowledge that will influence your choices of format, register, and content (particularly how you will phrase information that they already know but that needs to be stated).

Rodgers' Writing Tips by tips.rhettime.net is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
Copyright Ida L. Rodgers, 2004
Updated January 16, 2012
Updated January 16, 2012