An Empirical Study On Audience Awareness In English Writing Of Non-English Majors

The important role of audience awareness in writing has been widely acknowledged nowadays, and lots of studies have been conducted on this issue. However, few attempts have been made to comprehensively explore the area, let alone develop effective pedagogy. This study aims at analyzing the level of non-English major students’audience awareness in their English writing, their general perceptions of audience and audience awareness, their employment of metadiscourse features in actual writing, and whether there’s any difference between students’general perceptions and their performance in actual writing.The sources of data for the present study involved an open-ended questionnaire and the sample writings.55non-English major junior students of a comprehensive university participated in the study. All of them were required to complete a writing task and fill up the questionnaire. Responses to the questionnaire were elicited to get a general understanding of students’perceptions of audience and audience awareness. The writing products were analyzed based on Berrill’s (1992) Audience Awareness Scale with the purpose of investigating the level of students’ audience awareness, and the metadiscourse features summarized by Vande Kopple (1985) were used as a complementary means to determine the level of students’audience awareness by analyzing the linguistic features in their writing.The results indicated that most students acknowledged the importance of audience and audience awareness in writing, but their perceptions of their own audience awareness were not in line with their performance in actual writing. According to students’ performance in actual writing scored by Berrill’s Audience Awareness Scale, more than half of them were at the intermediate level and below. In addition, students’performance of the employment of metadiscourse features varied from student to student. Some categories and subcategories were employed with a relatively high frequency while some were used with a relatively low frequency. Besides, two categories and their subcategories were not touched by students in their actual writing. The study also showed that there was significant difference between the score concerning their level of audience awareness and that of their employment of metadiscourse features in actual writing, which meant that students with higher level of audience awareness performed better in employing metadiscourse features in actual writing.The study concluded that audience awareness played a significant role in effective writing, but students were not strong in considering audience in the writing process or combining audience awareness with actual writing. It suggested that theoretical explanation of the significance and necessity of audience awareness in writing together with the training of audience awareness is the foundation to raise and enhance students’ audience awareness. On the part of the teachers, it is of necessity to design a long-term plan of audience awareness strategy training and guide students with effective methods. The limitations of the present study and suggestions for future research are finally provided.