Suppose you want your school to let seniors leave campus for lunch. "We're almost adults and deserve some freedom" is the reason you find convincing. The assistant principal who would answer for every student off campus at noon hears it as a reason to worry, because it says nothing about what she cares about: knowing where students are, getting them back for fifth period, and not explaining an accident to a parent. Writing runs Topic 2.1's analysis forward: instead of reading a writer's assumptions about an audience out of a finished text, you work out what your readers believe, value, and need, and then you choose what goes on the page to meet them there.
Start from what your audience believes, values, and needs
Before you draft, answer four questions about the people you are writing to. They are the same four that Topic 2.1 used for reading, asked from the writer's seat.
- What do they already believe about this? Not about the world in general: about your specific proposal or claim. Their current belief is your starting point.
- What do they value that my position actually serves? This is the bridge. You are looking for something they already care about that your claim helps them get.
- What do they need before they can agree? Information they lack, reassurance about a risk, a small first step, a way to change their minds without looking foolish.
- Where will they resist? The objection they will raise first, or have already raised.
For the off-campus lunch proposal, two audiences give very different answers:
| Question | Assistant principal | Parent association |
|---|---|---|
| Believes | Students off campus are a liability; some won't come back on time | Seniors are nearly adults but still need limits |
| Values | Safety, accountability, a predictable schedule | Their children's safety, independence before college, fairness |
| Needs | A way to know who is out and who is back; a consequence for lateness | Assurance about supervision and driving; a sense the school will enforce rules |
| Resists | "What happens when something goes wrong?" | "Why should my kid lose privileges because of someone else's?" |
The table decides the argument. For the assistant principal, the strongest version is a sign-out system with ID scans and a rule that one late return ends the privilege for that student; your wish for freedom appears, if at all, as practice for the independence of college. For the parent association, the same proposal leads with independence before college and the enforcement that protects their children. Your position hasn't changed. What you emphasize, what you prove, and what you promise have all changed.
Choosing appeals and evidence for these readers
Topic 2.1 defined the appeals. As a writer, your job is to choose which ones this audience will respond to, and how much of each.
Evidence that counts with them. Every audience trusts some kinds of support more than others. A budget committee wants costs and outcomes; a group of parents responds to a specific child's experience; a group of scientists wants a study. Choose your main evidence from the kind this audience already trusts, and use other kinds to support it. With a given audience, one solid piece of the kind it trusts usually does more than several of a kind it discounts: a budget committee can wave away three moving stories, but a cost figure from its own records is hard to dismiss.
Credibility you can actually claim. You probably aren't an expert, but you have standing: you were there, you are affected, you did the work of finding out. A student writing about the bus schedule has firsthand knowledge of a 6:40 a.m. pickup that no school board member has. You also build credibility on the page, by stating the other side fairly, admitting a real cost of your proposal, and avoiding exaggeration. For an audience that disagrees with you, fairness is usually the most valuable credibility you have.
Emotion that fits the audience and the occasion. An appeal to emotion works when the audience already has reason to feel it and the occasion allows it. A eulogy, a fundraising letter, or a speech at a rally can carry strong feeling. A proposal to a facilities manager mostly can't, and piling on emotion there signals that you have no better reasons. The more skeptical the audience, the more your emotional appeals should come from concrete facts (what happened, to whom, when) rather than from adjectives telling the reader how to feel.
The objection they already hold. If you know your readers will think "this costs too much" or "this will be noisy," answer that in your own text, in a sentence or two, before they can use it to stop reading. You don't need a full rebuttal yet; Units 7 and 9 cover qualifying claims and responding to counterarguments in depth. Here, the point is that ignoring the audience's main concern tells them you haven't thought about them.
Words and tone. Words carry values. "Outdated rules" insults the people who wrote the rules, and they may be your audience. "Rules written before the school had ID scanners" makes the same point while giving them a reason to change without admitting they were wrong. Choose a tone that matches the relationship: respectful and direct with someone who has authority over your request, warmer with peers, never contemptuous toward anyone you are trying to persuade.
Revision questions about audience
The multiple-choice section includes student drafts with numbered sentences, and some of their questions test this skill. The stem names an audience or a goal: "The writer wants to address the concerns of readers who worry about cost," "The writer wants to appeal to residents who value the town's history," "Which version of sentence 8 best maintains a respectful tone toward readers who disagree?"
The method is the one you use to write:
- From the stem, name the audience and the specific belief, value, or concern in a few words.
- Ask what that audience would need to hear.
- Pick the choice that supplies it. Reject choices that appeal to a different audience, to the writer's own values, or to emotion without addressing the concern.
A wrong choice in these questions can be well written and on topic. It fails because it serves someone other than the audience the stem names.
Worked examples
The environmental club wants to collect fruit and vegetable scraps from the cafeteria after lunch for its compost bins behind the greenhouse. You will write a short email proposing this to Ms. Reyes, the cafeteria manager, who runs three lunch periods for about 900 students with a staff of six. Profile her as an audience, then write the email's main paragraph.
Show solution
The profile.
- Believes: her job is to feed 900 students on schedule, and new programs usually mean more work for her staff.
- Values: her staff's time, a clean and orderly cafeteria, and passing health inspections.
- Needs: to know who does the work, that nothing will smell or attract pests, and that she can end it if it causes trouble.
- Resists: "My people don't have time for this."
The paragraph.
The environmental club would like to collect fruit and vegetable scraps from the lunch trays for our compost bins behind the greenhouse, and we've planned it so that it adds nothing to your staff's work. Two club members would stand at the tray-return line during each lunch period with lidded buckets, and we would carry the buckets out to the bins before the period ends, so nothing is left in the cafeteria. We would take only fruit and vegetable scraps, no meat or dairy, which keeps away the smells and pests that could cause trouble with an inspection. If it creates any problem for you, we'll stop that day. Could we try it for two weeks starting March 3?
Why each choice is there. The first sentence answers her main objection before she can raise it. The second says exactly who does what and when, which is the information she needs to picture it working. The third connects the plan to a value she holds (passing inspections) and settles a risk she would otherwise worry about. The offer to stop and the two-week trial give her a way to say yes without committing to anything permanent.
What was left out. The club's real reason, cutting the landfill waste that feeds climate change, appears nowhere. It's a good reason, and it's the writer's, not hers. A sentence about it would cost the email nothing, but leading with it would make her read three sentences before learning what the plan does to her kitchen.
A student wrote this paragraph for a letter to the Linden Park Neighborhood Association, whose members will vote on whether to support a proposed skate park on Cedar Avenue. Several members live near the site and have complained about noise.
People in this neighborhood need to stop complaining about the skate park. Skateboarding is a real sport, and kids have nowhere else to go. The noise is not a big deal, and anyone who says otherwise is just against teenagers.
Revise the paragraph for this audience and explain the changes.
Show solution
Neighbors on Cedar Avenue have raised a fair concern: a skate park can be loud, and the people closest to it would hear it every day. The parks department's design answers much of that. The bowl is set four feet below ground level, the park would close at 8 p.m., and a row of evergreens would stand between the ramps and the nearest houses. In return, the teenagers who now skate in the Grover Street parking lot, where a skater was struck by a backing car last fall, would have a supervised place a short walk from the high school.
What changed, and why.
- The insults are gone. "Stop complaining" and "just against teenagers" attack the very people who will vote. The revision opens by calling their concern fair, which costs the writer nothing and makes the rest of the paragraph believable to them.
- The noise concern gets evidence instead of dismissal. The original asserted that noise was "not a big deal," which these readers know from experience to doubt. The revision gives three specific features that reduce noise. The neighbors need that information before they can agree.
- The argument is attached to their values. Neighbors care about safety and order on their streets, so the revision's reason for the park is a skater hit in a parking lot and the promise of supervision. "Skateboarding is a real sport" was cut: no one in the audience disputed it, so it answered a question they weren't asking.
- The tone is respectful and direct. The writer still takes a clear position, but now speaks as a neighbor would to neighbors.
The passage below is a draft of a letter that a high school student wrote for the town newsletter, which is mailed to every household in Millbrook.
(1) Most garages in Millbrook hold a ladder that comes down twice a year and a drill that comes out for one bookshelf. (2) The Millbrook Public Library could change that by lending tools the way it lends books. (3) A resident with a library card could borrow a pressure washer for a weekend, a tile saw for a bathroom project, or a stud finder for ten minutes of use. (4) The library in nearby Carver Falls started a tool collection two years ago and lent 1,900 tools in its first year.
(5) A tool library would save households money. (6) A pressure washer costs about $300, and most owners use theirs once or twice a year. (7) Borrowing would also free up space in garages and keep tools out of landfills when people move. (8) Only people too cheap to buy their own tools would object to sharing.
(9) The library board will vote on a six-month trial at its April 14 meeting. (10) Residents who support the trial can sign the form at the circulation desk.
Question 1. The writer wants to add a sentence after sentence 7 to address a concern that the owners of Millbrook's hardware store are likely to have. Which of the following sentences best accomplishes this goal?
- (A) Many residents would rather borrow a tool than buy one.
- (B) In Carver Falls, the hardware store reports that people who borrowed tools often came in afterward for the blades, bits, and supplies their projects required, and some bought a tool of their own once they knew they needed it.
- (C) The library would need a part-time staff member to inspect tools when they are returned.
- (D) Hardware stores have faced competition from online sellers for many years.
Question 2. The writer is considering deleting sentence 8. Should the writer keep or delete it?
- (A) Keep it, because it anticipates an objection to the proposal.
- (B) Keep it, because it supports the claim in sentence 5 that a tool library would save money.
- (C) Delete it, because it insults readers who might have reasonable objections, which could turn undecided readers against the proposal.
- (D) Delete it, because it contradicts the information about cost in sentence 6.
Question 3. The writer wants to revise sentence 10 to persuade residents who are unsure whether the trial is worth the library's money. Which version of sentence 10 best accomplishes this goal?
- (A) (as it is now)
- (B) Residents who support the trial can sign the form at the circulation desk; the trial would be paid for by a one-time gift from the Friends of the Library, not by the town budget.
- (C) Residents who support the trial should sign the form at the circulation desk immediately, before it is too late.
- (D) Residents who support the trial can sign the form at the circulation desk, where the librarians are always friendly and helpful.
Show solution
1. (B). A hardware store owner's concern is that a library lending tools will take customers away. (B) answers that fear directly, with evidence from a nearby town that borrowing sends people back to the store. (A) is the opposite of reassuring: it confirms the fear. (C) raises a cost to the library, which has nothing to do with the store. (D) is on the subject of hardware stores but answers no concern about the tool library, and it might even suggest the store is already struggling.
2. (C). Sentence 8 dismisses everyone who might disagree, including residents with reasonable concerns (cost, damaged tools, competition with a local business). The letter goes to every household and needs the undecided ones, and an insult gives them a reason to side against the writer. (A) is the trap: sentence 8 does mention objectors, but it doesn't answer any objection; it mocks the people who might hold one. (B) is false, since sentence 8 says nothing about savings. (D) gives the right decision with a false reason: nothing in sentence 8 contradicts sentence 6.
3. (B). Readers unsure whether the trial is "worth the library's money" have a cost concern, and (B) removes it by saying who pays and that the town budget doesn't. (C) adds pressure without a reason, which tends to make doubtful readers more doubtful. (D) praises the librarians, which answers no concern about cost. (A) tells supporters how to act but offers nothing to someone who isn't yet a supporter.
The method. Each stem named an audience with a specific concern: competition, being insulted, cost. The key answered that concern for that audience. Every distractor stayed on the subject of the tool library and served someone else, or no one.
Where students lose points
On the exam
Draft questions in the multiple-choice section test this skill with stems that name an audience or a goal tied to one: addressing a concern, appealing to a value, keeping a respectful tone, or persuading readers who are skeptical. In the free-response section, the argument essay usually doesn't name an audience, so write for a thoughtful reader who hasn't made up their mind. That reader needs your reasons explained, expects you to know what the other side would say, and is put off by exaggeration. Essays that recognize why a reasonable person might disagree and still make the case are showing the kind of complex understanding the sophistication point rewards. Topics 2.3 and 2.4 turn to the claims and evidence you build that case from.
Check yourself
Question 1
A student is writing to the members of a county farm bureau, many of whom oppose a proposed rule limiting fertilizer use near streams. Which opening sentence is most likely to keep these readers reading?
- A
Farmers who pollute our streams should be held responsible for the damage they cause.
- B
Every farmer in this county depends on clean water for livestock and irrigation, and the fertilizer that washes into Mill Creek is fertilizer a farmer paid for and lost.
- C
Scientists agree that fertilizer runoff is one of the leading causes of water pollution in the United States.
- D
As a teenager who cares deeply about the environment, I believe this rule is the right thing to do.
Show answer
B
B ties the rule to two things these readers already value, clean water for their own operations and money they have spent, so the argument starts on their ground. C is the tempting choice because it offers evidence, but it is a broad claim these readers may distrust and it does nothing to meet their objection; A accuses them, and D rests on the writer's own values.
- A
Question 2
A student draft argues that the school should replace its paper planners with a free calendar app. The intended readers are teachers who worry that students will be distracted by their phones. Write one sentence the student could add to address that concern.
Show answer
A sentence that answers the distraction worry directly, for example: "The app works offline and can be opened from the school laptops, so students who aren't allowed phones in class can still check assignments without taking one out."
The audience's concern is phones as distractions, so the added sentence has to show that the proposal doesn't require phones in class or explain how the risk is contained. A sentence about saving paper or students' preferences serves a different value and leaves the teachers' objection standing.
Question 3
A writer addressing a city budget committee about a new crosswalk has three pieces of evidence: a resident's account of a near miss, a count of 340 pedestrians crossing at rush hour, and a quotation from a famous urban planner who praises walkable cities. Which should she put first, and why?
- A
The resident's account, because emotional appeals are always the most persuasive.
- B
The planner's quotation, because citing an expert builds credibility with any audience.
- C
The pedestrian count, because a committee that decides how to spend money weighs how many people a project serves.
- D
None of them; she should open with her own opinion so the committee knows her position.
Show answer
C
The committee's job and values make the count the evidence it trusts most, so it should lead, with the account supporting it. B is tempting, but a general quotation about walkable cities says nothing about this crossing, and the claim that experts persuade any audience ignores who the audience is.
- A
Question 4
Why can a concession (for example, admitting that a proposal will cost money) make an argument more persuasive to readers who disagree with it?
Show answer
Admitting a real cost shows the writer is fair and isn't hiding anything, which makes skeptical readers more willing to trust the rest of the argument. It also takes away the objection the readers were going to raise and lets the writer answer it on the writer's terms.
A concession builds credibility with exactly the audience most likely to suspect the writer of exaggerating, and it shows the writer has thought about what those readers care about.