Unit 5 – Audience and Impact: Who is the audience? What impact does the text have on the audience?

Generally, this unit had focussed more on how we go about establishing who the audience is, and calculating the likely effect a text will have. This unit had been used by referring it in completing our second assignment, which is about a gay relationship. Basically, there are two categories of intended audience. First is for the specialist audience and second is for non-specialist audience. This is because it is not easy to predict who the target audience is or the target readers for any reading materials will be. If a writer cannot differentiate this, the article might be read by the people who may not have been intended as the audience. In identifying audience, a good question to ask first is ‘who is the text clearly not intended for’.

There are four critical readings that consist in this unit. Firstly, ‘Australia’s methadone madness’. Secondly, ‘Out of puff’. Thirdly, ‘Types of exposition: “persuading that” and “persuading to”’ and lastly followed by ‘Metaphor’. The key questions for this unit are who is the intended audience and what is the likely impact of the text on the audience. The rest of the unit had clarified the questions through the tasks that had developed the ability to identify audience and assess likely impact.

Unit 5 was presented by Shahida Suhana, Farah Aida and Nadia. Firstly, I can see that this group is very well-prepared not only from their written notes in the transparency but also from the way they present this unit. They had presented a good presentation and provide their points with examples by using a picture of kitten. There are some of key terms and ideas in the course information where I cannot understand such as analytical exposition, hortatory exposition and others.