About writing

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 409.

Task2

Use the flow diagram showing 'Teacher questioning' on the previous page as your basis for a text describing the process by which teachers ask and pupils answer questions. Then use the addition to the

flow diagram, shown below, to add to your text a description of another possible part of the same process.

One obvious way of writing up a process would be to produce one sentence for each step in the process. This would give a text of five sentences for the text on computing, and seven sentences for Task 2. However, such a text would often seem very inexpert and boring; every sentence would state one step, and every sentence would have the same shape as the others. We often put several steps into one sentence, and we mark the steps to make them clear for the reader if we think it might be necessary.

When writing, as well as asking 'Have I got the information across?', you also have to ask 'Have I got the information across in a clear and interesting form?' To help yourself answer these questions, keep in mind the following principles of communication.

1 The clarity principle

Make everything clear to your reader.

2 The reality principle

Assume that your reader has a knowledge of the world and does not have to be told everything.

When judging whether you have been successful in conveying information about a process, the decisions you make about whether to use sequencers, and which ones to use, will be particularly important. Sequencers, such as then, next, after this, make clear the sequence in which events, or stages in a process, occur.

The table below gives some common sequencers used when describing a process:

The sequencers are usually placed at, or near, the beginning of a sentence. This is quite logical when you consider that sequencers only work as signposts for the reader if they give advance warning of the need to recognize relationships.

Using the clarity principle, you might decide to use a sequencer to make each step of the process clear. On the other hand, using the reality principle, you might decide that sequencers are not needed because the process is described in natural time order and the reader's knowledge of the world will make the sequence clear to her or him.