Understanding Audience and Purpose

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En provenance du cours de Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology

Technical Writing

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Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology

Technical Writing

61 note

Cours 4 sur 5 dans Specialization English for Research Publication Purposes

The course develops technical writing skills necessary to communicate information gained through a process of technical or experimental work. The course highlights the factors that determine the degree of technicality of the language and concepts involved. You will learn how to write different technical reports, e.g., laboratory reports, research reports, design and feasibility reports, progress reports, consulting reports, etc. The course also approaches several language, structure, style, and content issues that you can encounter while reporting the results of your research.

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Module I: From Start to Finish

This module will help you acquire knowledge about technical writing, which deals with complex topics in precise ways. The module covers issues related to workplace research that you will have to conduct as a technical writer. Regardless of which technique you use, your challenge will be to sort the relevant information from the irrelevant, and the accurate from the bogus. The module focuses on audience, purpose, and measures of excellence in technical documents. In addition, you will learn what it means to be a good technical communicator. The references included at the end this module will serve as a perfect complement to the information described in the video lectures.

Understanding Audience and Purpose6:24

Collaborative Writing7:34

Writing for Multiple Audiences5:24

Rencontrer les enseignants

Elena Bazanova
Director of the Language Training and Testing Center
Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology

The writing process consists of five steps, planning, drafting, revising,

editing, and proofreading.

The frustrating part of writing is that these five steps are not linear.

That is, at any step, you'll need to go back and rethink all five steps.

Remember to, that many of the documents you produce will never truly be finished.

Planning which can take more than a third of th

total time spent on the writing project.

It's critically important for

every document from an email message to book like manual.

Start by thinking about your audience, because you need to understand whom you're

writing to before you can figure out you need to say about the subject.

If you're lucky, you can talk with the audience before and

during your work on the document.

These conversations can help you learn what your reader has already know,

what they want to know and how they would like the information to be presented.

You can test out drafts making changes as you go everything.

If you cannot consult your audience while writing your document,

you still need to learn everything you can about your readers, so

that you can determine the best scope of organization and style for your document.

Then for

each of your most important readers try to answer the following three questions.

Who is the reader?

Consider such factors, education, job experience, their responsibilities,

skilled in reading English, cultural characteristics and personal preferences.

What are your readers attitudes and expectations?

Consider the reader's attitudes toward the topic in your message, as well as

the reader's expectations about the kind of documents you will be presenting.

Why and how would reader use your document?.

Think about what readers will do with the document.

List some quotes in their physical environment in which they will use it.

The techniques they will use it in reading it, and

the tasks they will carry out after they finish reading it.

You cannot start to write until you again state the purpose or

purposes of the document.

Ask yourself these two questions.

After my readers have read the document, what do I want them to know or do?

What beliefs or attitudes do I want them to hold?

A statement of purpose might be as simple as this, the purpose of this report

is to recommend whether the company should adopt a health-promotion program.

Although the statement of purpose might not appear in this form,

in the final document you want to state it clearly how to help you

stay on track as you carry out the remaining steps.

Once you have a good idea of what you already know about your topic,

you must obtain the rest of the information you will need.

You can find and

evaluate what other people have already written by reading different books,

scholarly books, articles, websites and reputable blogs and discussion boards.

In addition, you might compile new information by interviewing experts,

distributing surveys or questionnaires, making observations,

sending inquiries and conducting experiment or different experiments.

Don't forget to ask questions and gather opinions from your own

network of associates, both inside and outside the organization.

For technical documents, it's best to turn to two kinds of people for

help, subject-matter experts and actual or potential users.

Subject-matter experts can help you determine whether your facts or

explanations are accurate and appropriate.

Both actual users of your existing document and prosperous users

of the next version of the document can help you see problems you and

other knowledgable readers do not notice.

How do you learn from subject matter experts, and from users, and

prospective users?

Here are a few techniques.

Surveying, interviewing or observing readers as they use the existing document.

Interviewing subject matter experts about the draft of the document.

Conducting focus groups to learn users or

prosperous users opinions about an existing or proposed document.

Uploading the document to an online writing space, such as

Microsoft SharePoint or Google Drive, and authorizing people to revise it.

It's important to revise old drafts whether it's special important to

revise draft documents that will be read and used by people of other cultures.

If your readers came from another culture

try to have your draft reviewed by someone from their culture.

That reviewer can help you see whether you have made correct assumptions

about how readers will react to your ideas and

whether you have chosen appropriate kinds of evidence and design elements.

Having to revise and make changes to its content and

organization, it's time for you to edit.

Editing is the process of checking the draft to improve its grammar, punctuation,

style, usage, word choice, and mechanics, such as use of numbers and abbreviations.

After editing,

you should proofread your document to make sure you typed what you meant to type.

Remember that the spell checker and grammar checker do not flag all errors.

Although some writers can proofread effectively on the screen,

other prefer to print a copy of the text.

These writers say that because the text looks different on the page

than it does on the screen, they're more likely to approach it with fresh eyes

as their eventual readers will and therefore more likely to see errors.

Regardless of whether you proofread on screen or on paper, the process is no fun.

But it is vital to produce in a clear,

well written document that reflects your high standards and

understands or underscores your credibility as a professional.

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