Brochures: Writing for Audience and Purpose

Overview

Featured Resources

From Theory to Practice

 

OVERVIEW

This brochure assignment follows another writing assignment, giving students the opportunity to see how shifting purposes and audiences creates changes in their strategies as writers—in the stance they take, in the information they use or leave out, and in the processes they follow to complete the task. After exploring published brochures, students determine key questions about their previously-used topic by first generating their own questions and then asking others what they would want to know. They then research the topic to find answers to three key questions. Finally, they work through the writing process to create their own informative brochure which incorporates visual elements as part of the informative communication. During the process, they re-examine sample brochures, looking for the types of texts included and how the text is laid out on the page.

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FEATURED RESOURCES

Brochure Inquiry: This handout guides students in considering questions related to their topic and then asking others to suggest important questions, as well.

Evaluative Reading: This handout gives students specific guidance in peer reviewing a classmate's brochure.

ReadWriteThink Printing Press: Students can use this online tool to create brochures, flyers, booklets, and newspapers.

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FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

In the book, Strategic Writing, Deborah Dean explains this brochure lesson as a way to help students understand that writing for differing purposes and audiences may require using different genres, different information, and different strategies. Developing a sense of audience and purpose in writing, in all communication, is an important part of growth as a writer. Shifting from one genre with its incumbent audience and purpose to another, builds sensitivity to these factors in students. Additionally, today's students are confronted by a variety of texts that integrate verbal and visual materials to create a unified message. Creating a text that combines verbal and visual elements can develop students' ability to navigate increasingly complex uses of text types in their world, especially their world online.

Further Reading
Dean, Deborah. 2006. Strategic Writing: The Writing Process and Beyond in the Secondary English Classroom. Urbana, IL: NCTE.

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