Students work most productively when they feel free to move back and forth from ignoring audience to addressing it. Students should consider audience as they begin a writing task. Then they should get away from it all and simply write. If they find an audience inhibiting, they should feel free to ignore the idea of audience altogether or alter their concept of audience. When they are ready to make a draft public, they should have enough material to work with a real public. It is then that students should be aware of the unique aspects of an oral culture and the oral nature of discourse. An awareness of this sense of an orality and its characteristics and using the unique oral aspects of a classroom as forum for written work are ways in which students can use rhetoric more effectively. A good assignment for the freshman confronted with audience analysis might be to chart his or her awareness of audience from the composition's inception to its completion. The result of such charting may reveal an evolving audience which combines the best aspects of all the audiences along the continuum. (An audience continuum chart is included.) (PRA)