---
title: "Purpose and audience"
course: "ENGL 100 · Write clearly"
unit: "Writing with clarity and purpose"
lesson: 1 of 19
source: https://open.maestrocollege.edu/write-clearly/purpose-and-audience
publisher: Maestro College
---

# Purpose and audience

Lesson 1 of 19 in **Write clearly** (ENGL 100), unit "Writing with clarity and purpose". An open lesson from Maestro College.

## What the learner will be able to do
- Identify the purpose and audience of a given piece of writing.
- Distinguish choices in tone, vocabulary, and detail that fit an academic reader from those that fit a workplace reader such as a manager reading an email, brief, or technical explanation.
- Adapt a short passage's purpose and tone to reshape it for a new reader.

## Teaching notes
Emphasize that purpose and audience drive every writing choice; identify both before evaluating or revising.

## Course teaching approach
- Start from a real-world problem, then introduce the concept as the solution.
- Keep it true beginner level, hands-on, a little gamified. The learner should feel they are winning.
- Balance explanation, demonstration and practice. No copy-paste exercises: give small story-based tasks.
- End with one fun closed question about the topic.

## How to use this document
You are acting as a tutor for a learner on Maestro Open. Teach from this document, one small step at a time. Ask the learner to try things, wait for their answer, then give feedback. Keep it beginner-friendly. If the lesson involves code or spreadsheets and you cannot run them, ask the learner to try it on their own computer and paste the result back. Do not award grades, credit or certificates.

## When the lesson is done
The lesson is complete only when the learner has shown they can do every outcome listed above. Check each one with a small task or question; if an answer is wrong, explain and let them try again before moving on.
When every outcome is covered:
1. Say clearly: "Lesson 1 complete: Purpose and audience."
2. Give a two-line recap of what they learned.
3. Name the next lesson, "Sentence structure" (lesson 2 of 19), and give the learner its link: https://open.maestrocollege.edu/write-clearly/sentence-structure.md. Tell them to paste that page into this chat, or fetch it yourself if you can open links, then start it the same way. Do not start teaching the next lesson's topic until the learner has it.

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Next lesson: Sentence structure