Chapter 4 — Writing for Your Readers

Chapter 4 of Houp/Pearsall/Tebeaux's Reporting Technical Information, 9th ed. (New York: Allyn & Bacon, 1997) discusses strategies for analyzing audiences. Accompanying the textbook, this chapter of the online instructor manual provides the following:

Chapter Objectives

• Know the four types of audiences as defined by point of view.

• Understand the needs, limitations, and other characteristics of these four types of audiences.

• Be able to list and use techniques for adapting technical materials to lay readers, as presented in this chapter.

• Understand which parts of technical reports executives use the most.

• Understand how to design a report for use by a mixed audience.

• Understand how cultural differences can influence technical reporting for an international audiences.

• Understand how to do an audience analysis—the questions to ask, the areas to explore.

Using this chapter, students must develop a method for defining and analyzing audiences, and they should explore some tools they can use to enable lay people to understand technical material.

The audience-analysis technique defined in this chapter is one of the most powerful tools in technical writing. This framework is one of the features that has always set Reporting Technical Information apart. Be aware that other ways of defining audience categories exist. The approach in this chapter relies on what knowledge readers have and what uses they have for the technical information to be reported. In computer documentation, audiences are often defined according to how the readers will use the information—for example, as end users, system administrators, programmers, site planners, and so on. You might spend some time with your class trying to stretch the audience categories presented in this chapter, or even challenge students to work up a different system altogether.

To build some excitement into this unit, focus on adaptation techniques that enable lay audiences to understand complex technical information. You can build on everyone's frustrating experiences with incomprehensible technical manuals; you can point to the rapid technological change going on in our society; and you can emphasize how important it is to have technical writers capable of enabling lay audiences to understand and use these new technologies.

Here are some in-class activities to help students learn about audience and other issues covered in chapter 4:

1. Give the initial quiz. Use the quiz at the beginning of your unit on audience as a springboard into discussion of key aspects of the chapter. When students have completed the quiz, you can go through the answers with them.

2. Discuss strongly contrasted excerpts on the same technical topic. Collect and bring to class (or have your students collect and bring to class) pairs of technical excerpts written in strongly contrasting ways, for example, an excerpt from Reader's Digest and another from Scientific American—both on the same topic. Have students define the characteristics of the audience that the writers probably had in mind.

3. Stage some in-class role-playing. If you are able to loosen your students up enough (or if they already are), consider orchestrating some one-on-one role-playing in front of the class. For example, have one student pretend to be a lay person and the other student read a technical paragraph that she or he understands. Have the lay audience act out boredom, confusion, bewilderment, and other such typical emotions. Try different combinations of information and audience.

4. Stage an in-class technical explanation. Find one of your brainier, more technically astute students, and one who is talkative as well, and have that student attempt to explain a technical concept to you. As recipient of this information, play as dumb as you dare. Before this exercise, have students design a chart listing as many techniques for explaining technical material to lay persons as they can. Have them identify those techniques as the student attempts to explain the concept to you.

5. Analyze lay-audience adaptation techniques. Have students bring to class well-written technical discussions aimed at lay audiences and show the rest of the class which techniques were used.

6. Turn the technical tables. Devise a scenario in which your students must struggle to understand some complicated technical excerpt. For example, invite a technical expert in for your students to interview about the excerpt. During and after this exercise, have students explore this experience and identify which techniques helped them understand.

7. Do an in-class mock audience analysis. To the class, propose one or more hypothetical report situations and then focus in depth on the audience-analysis phase. Have students discuss technical level, occupation or position, relationship to the writer, attitude toward the subject, information needs of the audience, audience's uses for the information, and so on.

Here are some discussion questions related to this chapter:

Point of View (pages 62-65)

• What kinds of documents would you expect to see targeted for lay people? For executives? For experts? For technicians?
• How does each group of readers use information?

Providing Needed Background (pages 65-66)

• How much background is reasonable for a technical writer to provide?
• Where should definitions be most usefully placed in a report?
• In what ways is technical writing like teaching in the ways in which it provides background to let readers learn new information?

Helping Readers Through Your Report (pages 66-72)

• In what ways is reading academic texts unlike reading for other kinds of learning and use?
• How do technical writers structure their writing differently from the writing of university students?
• In what ways can college writing usefully incorporate some of the strategies for skimming, scanning, search reading, receptive reading, and critical reading?
• What kinds of practical writing best illustrate design for different kinds of reading?

Style (pages 72-76)

• What range of styles—more personal, more technical, more abstract— can and should technical writing display?
• How do different readers respond to different styles?
• What kinds of technical writing display different kinds of style?

Graphics (page 76)

• What kinds of graphics help different readers understand, use, read, or navigate different kinds of technical documents? Where do such graphics appear in reports?
• In what ways can graphics serve as useful background? To help readers through reports?
• How is the style of graphics similar to the style of writing in technical information for different kinds of readers?

Discourse Communities (pages 77-81)

• In what ways is a college or university a discourse community?
• How is the community divided? Students? Faculty? Staff? Administration? Academic departments?
• In what ways does language serve the needs of different members? How does it identify membership and roles?

The Combined Audience (pages 81-84)

• What strategies of style, organization, and graphics have you seen that make information useful to diverse readers with diverse needs?
• How difficult is it to define a combined audience?

International Readers (pages 84-88)

• In what ways do Americans assume that all cultures solve problems and communicate directly?
• What kinds of assumptions about tone, humor, and metaphors do writers for international audiences need to understand?

Here are some ideas for journal writing in your technical communication courses:

Point of View (pages 62-65)

• To which of the types of readers (lay people, executives, experts, and technicians) do you best belong?
• What kinds of technical information have you seen for the different types of readers? How did you respond to them?

Providing Needed Background (pages 65-66)

• What sorts of background would make information valuable for different types of readers?
• How much background do you feel different types of readers need?
• How much do you find useful in reports and instructions you use?

Helping Readers Through Your Report (pages 66-72)

• What are your reading habits for different kinds of technical information?
• How does your reading to use a document differ from your reading to learn it?
• What makes it easy for you to use, navigate through, and read different kinds of information?
• Should an introduction grab your interest or tell you what to expect?

Style (pages 72-76)

• What kinds of writing style do you find useful in different kinds of technical or practical information?
• When would you expect and want technical shorthand?
• When would you find a more personal approach appropriate?
• In what ways would qualifying a statement make an author more intellectually honest?

Graphics (page 76)

• What kinds of graphics are suitable to different kinds of audiences?
• How do you find writing style and graphics work together in books, articles, procedures, or reports that you find work well?

Discourse Communities (pages 77-81)

• What discourse communities do you belong to? Your major? Your university? Your career?
• How does language express shared information and values you recognize and respond to?

The Combined Audience (pages 81-84)

• What do you consider the best strategies for meeting the needs of a combined audience?
• How would your use of style, graphics, and organization help different readers meet different needs?
• Is writing for this kind of audience harder or easier than writing for a more narrowly defined one? In what situation do you feel most comfortable?

International Readers (pages 84-88)

• How do you feel about writing for readers from another culture?
• How could you best learn to understand how best to meet their needs and not to distract by using language that could mislead or offend?

Here are some ideas for writing projects related to chapter 4, including ideas for collaborative projects:

1. Write a memo on audience-adaptation techniques. Have your students write a memo summarizing the audience-adaptation techniques they observed in the in-class technical explanation exercise or in the in-class analysis of technical excerpts; or have them write a memo analyzing a technical passage that they choose. (This is similar to exercise 3 in the textbook, but the range of questions for textual analysis is much broader there.)

   To turn this into a collaborative project, suggest that student teams organize themselves into these roles:

   • Manager. Establishes a timetable for the memo, assigns roles, conducts team meetings.
     
   • Author. Composes the draft from the notes and comments of other team members.
     
   • Reviewers. Review the draft for agreement on content, logical organization, clarity of style.
     
   • Proofer. Checks the memo for correctness.

2. Translate a technical passage. Have students select a technical excerpt that they understand but that lay audiences would not. Have them adapt and rewrite that excerpt for lay audiences. A less risky and less ambitious version of this exercise is to have the entire class struggle to understand a technical excerpt that is unfamiliar territory for all of them. For example, bring in an expert whom they can interview about the excerpt. (This is essentially exercise 1 in the textbook.)

   To turn this into a collaborative project, suggest that student teams organize themselves into these roles:

   • Technical Content Expert. A major in the technical area of the discussion.
     
   • Interviewers. Develop questions for the technical expert.
     
   • Facilitator. Schedules and manages the group interview with the Technical Content Expert.
     
   • Scribe. Takes notes and writes a summary of the interview.
     
   • Editor. Drafts the revision of the technical document.
     
   • Reviewers. Check the draft for accuracy, order, completeness, and style.

3. Write a memo on one of the articles on international communication in appendix B. Have students team-read and team-summarize the articles on international communication in appendix B of Reporting Technical Information, and then hold an in-class panel discussion. (This is exercise 4 in the textbook.)

   To turn this into a collaborative project, suggest that student teams organize themselves into these roles:

   • Reviewers. Read, take notes, raise questions about the article.
     
   • Agenda Planner. Reviews the reviewers' materials. plans the in-class panel discussion, raising key questions, distributes the questions to panel members.
     
   • Panel Members. Take part in the panel discussion.
     
   • Facilitator. Conducts the discussion in class.

Team Spirit

A Taxing Problem

Big Talk

Negative Impressions

The following point summaries focus on key points in this chapter of Houp/Pearsall/Tebeaux's Reporting Technical Information: