Audience Awareness

The article I read focused on an anthropologist Linda B who was being studied in regards to awareness of her audience when writing something. She and the others who were not mentioned in this article but were also studied all publish things in journals of their respective fields. The study went as follows, the participants were told they were giving a speech at a high school about their careers, and were asked to express aloud as they wrote what they would say to the students they were going to talk to. Observers would record what happened and conclude if avid writers( those being studied) put more thought into their audience than your everyday writer. What researchers found was that indeed Linda and the other participants did put more thought into their audience, they mentally pictured them and tried to connect with them. People like me who are untrained in rhetorical thought could only think about the topic which we were to focus on. It's interesting to read this because i now understand that i have to get see past the topic in order to truly understand my audience.