It is easier to write when you know who you are writing for. However, some tasks set in university FL departments (prose translation, essay, etc) have no clear sense of audience or purpose at all. Yet encouraging writing with a sense of audience in mind seems to be a crucial transferable element in developing FL writing, even where the task is not particularly communicative. Sometimes students seem to be able to do this naturally for themselves. For example, better students are likely to find out something about the reader of their essays or assignments, regardless of how 'communicative' such tasks are. They may mould the content to the preferences of the reader. They might also, for example:

• ask their tutor directly for hints as to how to do an essay;
• show a small sample of their writing to their tutor for feedback;
• find out about their tutor's preferences by reading his/her own writing;
• look at examples of essays/ projects done in previous years;
• use 'folk-loric' knowledge gained from other students to ascertain what a particular tutor approves of/disapproves of.

Flower and Hayes (1980) demonstrate (see Hedge,1988) that skilled writers seem to be particularly sensitive to their audience, while weaker writers tend to focus on their own writing at the expense of the reader. Thus, the writing of weaker writers often lacks pace and focus, and is generally less accessible to the reader. Naturally, FL writers have to concentrate harder than their native-speaker counterparts on observing conventions of style and grammar when writing. Thus, it is understandable that the audience becomes relegated to secondary importance. Yet if your students can be given practice in working within a clear context where a piece of writing has an intended purpose and audience, they will gradually find these skills easier.

Many types of writing lack an immediate sense of audience (eg structural and manipulative exercises, personal diaries or reflective journals). Sometimes, though, tasks will have a ready-made addressee other than the tutor, and these may be useful to explore in the classroom:

• writing a letter requesting information;
• writing a student newspaper;
• publishing an information leaflet for new students;
• writing web-based guidance;
• writing an alternative prospectus for prospective students;
• devising a video script;
• producing a letter to the editor of a newspaper.

When performing the above tasks, writers require an intuitive sense of the likely interests of their reader. This will be easier if the reader belongs to the same community as they do (student newspaper, alternative prospectus).

When you set writing tasks, you may wish to discuss with your students any known features of the audience. These may include the reader's:

• age;
• socio-economic group;
• ethnic group;
• education;
• specialized knowledge;
• likely opinion;
• likely broad-mindedness.

In HE settings, of course, you will need to bear in mind that the field of readership is still relatively narrow, and perhaps even stereotyped. For instance, many groups of people are still under-represented in HE (eg black people, working-class people), so that the variety of readership is not as great as it will be in transferable, real-life situations.