SQR 6

Brie Fenton Yesenia Ontiveros

ENG 1301.28

Trang Phan

oct. 20, 2010


Closing My Eyes as I Speak: An Argument for Ignoring Audience

Elbow, Peter. "Closing My Eyes as I Speak: An Argument for Ignoring Audience." College English 49.1 (1987): 50-69. Print.

Awareness of the audience can often cause incomplete thoughts and unclear writing. Elbow argues that if we ignore the audience we will end up with better writing in the end. It starts out weak but leads to better revisions. There are two different types of audiences: enabling and inhibiting. Enabling audiences cause us to think of better and more coherent things as we write and our piece turns out structured. We come up with ideas we did not know we had and we feel smart. It is helpful to keep these audiences in mind from the start. Inhibiting audiences block our writing. We feel dumb and can’t find our words or thoughts. When they are no longer pressuring us, all our thoughts come rushing back.
If we are constantly aware of the audience, were only thinking about how they will criticize our writing, we are not focusing. During the first stages of writing, if we ignore the audience, our words will be more true and clear. Teaching students how to realize when audience awareness is getting in their way, will help avoid overload and stressing. We can manipulate our thoughts and end up with better, developed writing than we would have had in the first place. Ignoring the audiences leads to stronger, more expressive and descriptive writing.

Question
The author says: “when attention to audience causes an overload, start out by ignoring them while you attend to your thinking; after you work out your thinking, turn your attention to audience” (p.53). How could you know when it’s overloaded?
Response
Many people have arguments about ignoring the audience. This method doesn’t not mean that you as the speaker have to block out the audience. In the article it mentions that when you feel over load to just ignore the audience. I really don’t think the author meant this as in were we forget about them and make no eye contact to them. The word “overload” I interpretation is; when we as the speaker feel nervous, and tempts to forget the subject. But the author ( Peter Elbow) of “ Closing My Eyes as I Speak” is intentions were not to tell us to ignore our audience but to not pay as much attention. I as the writer I tend to get nervous when I speak in front of a audience, what I do is tend to ignore the audience by simply not looking at them in the eyes, and think about something else. I also try not to memorize a speech because I tend to forget it.