This chapter provides detailed information about the whole process of audience analysis as well as overlapping it with the purpose. By this post, I want to elaborate more on one aspect of the chapter - audience.
The most important concept from the chapter seemed to me is the audience because this is the fundamental step to further structure a certain document (e.g. report, email, memo). Analyzing the reader is basically made to answer the following questions:
● Is your audience defined to be an expert or experienced enough in your field to be able to
understand the detailed explanations in the document? For instance: The use of MATLAB-related terminologies in your document does probably lead to confusion if you will be directing it towards students from the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Instead, you should emphasize more on simplifying your subject area to a general understanding level.
● What is your audience’s current attitude towards you and your subject of discussion which you are planning to present? For instance: If your audience feel hostile to your subject, it is reasonable to show the beneficial aspect of your subject
● What type of audience does your audience belong to? Is it primary, secondary, or tertiary? For instance: If you are going to write a message on behalf of Nazarbayev University (NU), your primary audience will be currently studying students whereas the secondary is the NU alumni which may teach English courses on the Campus.
● Presumably, how is your audience going to react after reading your document? Will they skim or read carefully to give further recommendations? For instance: If your document is designed for job application, then you should pay attention to how to design your document so that the most important points will be noticed right away when an employee will be skimming through it.
The above questions are just a few representations of the audience concept to show its importance and thus not limited to only 4 questions. There should also be taken into consideration cultural aspects of the audience as well as reading skills. As it can be seen from the above-delivered points, audience analysis builds the grounding map for future deliberation of the document. Hence, it is important to lay the direction of the document at an early stage. RP2: TC Chapter 15
TC Chapter 15 provides deliberate information regarding how to properly construct and
formalize different types of job materials. In this post, I will focus on what possible measures can be taken to make the resume look good in case there is not much experience and education.
The first thing that we can do to make the resume better is to include a list of core advanced courses in the education section which are related to the job you are trying to apply to. Moreover, you can write any other courses which will most probably interest the employer. It might be the course about technical communication. For example, if you are an electrical engineer student or graduate:
Other courses: ● WCS 210 (Technical and Professional Writing) - 6 ECTS ● BUS 101 (Business Fundamentals & Entrepreneurship) - 6 ECTS
The reason is that the employer needs not just skillful workers by their major, but also efficient communicators who are able to work in a team and know fundamental writing ethics. I assure you nobody wants to take conflictive members on their board.
Secondly, if you do not have much experience in your employment space, it is better to list your work experience which is unrelated to your job application. For example, if you worked as a sales manager in your summer period but you want to apply to a data scientist position, it is advantageous to include this experience in your employment history. Because the employer’s job is to know where did you spend your time to decide whether to add you to a list of potential laborers or not. Moreover, if you did not work anywhere since you were taking care of your parents or other reasons, you can explain it in the interview stage.
The last but not least thing is to focus on your skills, activities, and other elements which usually appear at the end of the resume. For instance, it can be any skill that can leave a positive impression on the employer. Since it indicates the time that you have spent all this time and shows your versatility and uniqueness as a candidate. RP3: Emerging Genres
In this article, Marika, Lin, and Terje elaborate on the “genre” concept and how can the concept be affected by the advancement of technology, particularly a popularization of social and personal media. By this post, I will focus on a dynamism of the genre and an analysis of genre structure.
According to the source, a dynamic pattern of the genre is originated from an increasing number of texts that appeared throughout media communication. Hence, it is what makes the range of genres sophisticated. Although the genre is aimed to specify and generalize virtual medium information, it makes society complex. A comparison of the personal and online personal diaries seemed to be the most relatable illustration exemplified by the authors.
The second aspect which took my attention was the operation of the genre: convention and expectation. An analysis of texts is what creates the conventional structure of the genre. Meanwhile, the expectation is the preceding part of the genre which comes after the convention. Both of them can be dynamic just as the whole genre is. Both of them might be varied and influenced not only by time but also by a type of communication (online or hard copy). The example about the diaries was straightforwardly applicable, as well, to visualize the change of the convention and expectation. Convention and expectation are interchangeably connected to each other.
The most discovering parts of the article for me were how may the genre be complex in terms of its dynamic flow and the beautiful structure veiling under what the majority know about a simple “genre”. RP5: TC Chapter 13
The usability of technical instructions is essentially measured and followed by three fundamental steps: reviewing, evaluating, testing. In this post, I will explain the important points of each of the steps in more detail.
Reviewing the document means reviewing the draft text on a great scale so that minor sentence-scale issues will remain ignored. Reviewing usually contains revising, editing, and proofreading. Revising is the process in which you are looking at your draft with the intention to correct the topics and sub-topics of the document. Editing includes such objectives as the expectation of the audience, the effectiveness of the design, the relevance and consistency of your information, and grammar mistakes. Meanwhile, proofreading is the last time when you go through the whole draft without any haste.
The evaluation process depends upon categories of evaluators and types of the evaluation. There can be three categories of evaluators: users, subject-matter experts, and usability experts. Concerning types of evaluation, there are 5 possible choices that evaluation may be directed to. The first one is the survey or interview dedicated to users. The second is based just on observation of users while they are working on your tech prior to the provision with the instruction. Another choice goes by interviewing either a subject-matter expert or a usability expert. The fourth opportunity is to create a focus group with prospective users in which the group of people will discuss the ideas regarding the improvement of the instruction. The last one is to treat a certain company to which you are designing an instruction, ask them to evaluate already existing active users, then, request brief results of their evaluation.
Usability Test includes such large processes as preparation, conducting the actual usability test, and interpreting the results. Preparation means setting up the test environment, preparing and selecting participants for the test, developing the action plan of the test, preparing the test materials. Meanwhile, a process of testing involves constant interaction with the participants and debriefing the participants (i.e. try to collect as many notes as possible for further analysis of the data). The last step is the resulting analysis.
Thus, reviewing and testing documents is not straightforward as it might have seemed for the first time
