Identifying Audience and Purpose - An Indian Father’s Plea

Identifying Audience and Purpose

An Indian Father's Plea

Standards

9.7(E)(iii)

9.1(A)

9.1(F)

9.4(F)

9.5(A)

9.5(E)

9.5(G)

What will our learning look like today?

Learning Intention

Success Criteria

Language Objective

Today, we will explore how understanding the audience and purpose of a text can significantly enhance our reading and comprehension skills. By the end of this lesson, you will be able to identify the intended audience and purpose in a text and understand how these elements contribute to the overall message.

• Correctly identify the audience and purpose of a given text.
• Explain how audience and purpose relate to one another.
• Apply this knowledge to improve your reading comprehension and critical thinking skills.

I will develop my academic vocabulary and language proficiency by discussing and writing about audience and purpose in texts.

Do Now:

Why do you think knowing your audience and purpose is crucial in communication?

Define:

In an argument, a writer or speaker puts forth a set of reasons designed to persuade others to adopt a certain point of view or to take a certain action. All authors, including the authors of argumentative texts, write for an audience. The audience consists of the people who read the text or listen to a presentation. To be effective, an author must customize his or her argument to address the audience’s values, concerns, and knowledge. In an argument, the author’s general purpose, or reason for writing or speaking, is to persuade the audience to adopt his or her point of view or to take action. The specific purpose, however, will vary depending on the subject of the argument. *Watch Concept Definition Video

Vocabulary

audience

purpose

argument

the people who read a written text, listen to an oral response or presentation, or watch a performance

a coherent series of reasons, statements, or facts intended to support or establish a point of view

the reason for or goal of doing something

Directions

Review the Checklist for Identifying Audience and Purpose below. Then read the Skill Model to examine how one student used the checklist to identify the audience and the purpose in “An Indian Father’s Plea.” As you read, identify the question from the checklist the student used for each annotation. Checklist for Identifying Audience and Purpose:To analyze the author’s purpose, note information from the following sections of the argument:

• the title
• the content of the first few paragraphs
• the claim

To analyze the identifiable audience or reader for an argument, use the following questions as a guide:

• Who would be interested in or affected by this topic?
• Who is the identifiable audience or reader? How do you know?
• How is the audience connected to the author’s purpose? What does the author want his or her audience to think or do?
• Does the author use sufficient evidence to make his or her case to the audience?

Skill Model

Noticing details and reading closely can help you analyze argumentative texts to identify the audience and understand the purpose of the text. Let’s look at how one reader identifies details about the audience of an open letter in “An Indian Father’s Plea”:

“Dear teacher” and other details suggest that the letter is specifically addressed to Wind-Wolf’s kindergarten teacher. As an open letter published in a journal, however, its larger audience may be all teachers in diverse classrooms.

The reader highlights the salutation “Dear teacher” at the beginning of the letter. The reader uses knowledge of the structure of formal letters to identify “teacher” as the audience of the text. The reader also highlights additional details that more specifically identify this teacher as Wind-Wolf’s kindergarten teacher, who has “already labeled him a slow learner.” The reader knows that this is an open letter, so she can use her knowledge of the characteristics of open letters to infer that the author is also addressing all teachers who are culturally different from their students and so may incorrectly label them “slow learners.” The reader continues reading “An Indian Father’s Plea” and analyzes the father’s purpose for writing the letter.

The father asks the teacher to be patient. He wants the teacher to understand that his son is not a “slow learner”; he is just adjusting to a new culture in the classroom, which differs from his Indian education.

In this passage, the reader highlights the father’s hope that the teacher “will be patient with him” when his son is “slow in grasping the methods and tools that you are now using your classroom, ones quite familiar to his white peers.” This hope for patience links to “the plea” referenced in the title “An Indian Father’s Plea.” From these details, the reader can infer that one of the father’s purposes for writing the letter is to change the perspective and behavior of a teacher who has unfairly judged his son to be a slow learner due to cultural differences.

Exit Ticket

Thanks!