During the first ten minutes of class, write a summary of your reading in Anderson’s Technical Communication, Chapter 3: Defining Your Communication’s Goals. Remember to format your response as a memo.
Top of comment: MEMO or Memorandum
TO:
FROM:
DATE:
RE: (Create your own meaningful subject)
(Your summary)
TO: Professor Ellis
FROM: Diego Tuso
DATE: 9/22/2014
RE: Proper Communicating Achivements
In Anderson’s TC the major lesson gained from Chapter 3 is to defining your information in order for the reader to comprehend and to always have the reader as your main focus of your writing. Anderson reminds us to not avoid using our personal thoughts or beliefs in our writing but always stay reader based. Also to remember how you want to aid the reader and how your writing will affect her/his opinion and actions for the certain situations. One main focus is that Andersons explains we must have in mind who and what background/culture the reader may be from and to learn about them as much as possible in order to make your job to persuade the reader to share the same feelings or concerns you have for the topic you are writing of. Always have a mental vision of what the reader will most likely gain from your writing and how successful the reader can be to do a certain action according to how successful your communication is. Anderson explains to always remain ethical when writing for the reasons explained before. In conclusion Anderson goes into great detail of how to identify your readers and being able to help them comprehend the tasks or solutions your writing details about.
To: Professor Ellis
From: Kanstantsin Yanchanka
Date: 09/22/2014
Subject: Communication’s Goals
In the third chapter, Paul Anderson explains how to achieve communication’s goals. He says that in order to achieve your communication’s goal, at first, help you reader achieve his goals. To do so, it is important to know what kind of questions the reader might ask and address these questions in your communication. Anderson divides people on three categories based on the questions they ask: decision makers, advisers, and implementers. Further, to make the writing easier to read, Anderson suggests making information be easily located, and, thus, he identifies four ways that readers use to find information: thorough sequential reading, reading instructions, reading for key points only, and reference reading. Additionally, the communication should be persuasive. The first step to make communication persuasive is to analyze the attitude of the reader and, if necessary, change it because some people might find your communication persuasive and others might not. Overall, easiness and persuasiveness are the qualities that will help achieve the goal of communication; however, Anderson emphasizes the ethical context of the communication because in some cases ethical context might turn readers away.
To: Pro. Ellis,
From: Ailin Guo
Date: September 22, 2014
Subject: Identifying Communication’s Goals
Chapter 3 defines the importance of identifying your communication’s goals by determining your readers and creating useful and persuasive communication for your readers. Identify your reader by identifying their role. Are they decision makers who care about the results of actions, advisers who needs support details or implementers who cares about the process of action? Deciding your reader’s role will decide the usefulness of your communication to complete their tasks. Also decide what you want your readers to feel after reading your communication. Therefore it’s always a good choice to make a profile of your reader by listing their professional roles, characteristics, and culture backgrounds. Sometimes your writing will find their way to many other people therefore it is important to always keep your writing professional. By making a list of your communication’s goal will increase your ability to write successfully in any environment
To: Professor Ellis
From: Tanman Dey
Date: Sep 22nd, 2014
Subject: Achieving Communication Goals
Chapter 3 of the book talks about defining your communication’s goal. This chapter gives information on to develop expertise in many activities people perform as they write at work. Through this chapter the author help us define what we want our communication to accomplish.
To achieve our communications goals, we need to provide information which will be easily understood by readers. Anderson says “the goals of workplace communications are to help and influence their readers” (Anderson, 60). It is important what we communicate is accepted by our readers and also they are satisfied with it.
The factors which can influence our readers is by the way we write. The format writing would depend on whom we writing to and in what circumstances readers will read.
Ultimately, when our communication helps our readers to achieve their goals, and then we can say we accomplish our communication goals. Throughout this chapter author describes all the strategies which workplace Communicators use in order to plan communications that are highly useful.
TO: Professor Ellis
FROM: Felix Baez
DATE: 09/22/14
RE: Analyzing and organizing your communication goals
The goal of workplace communications are usually to help educate or persuade personnel. Your communication goals need to be expressed in a clear manner so it is evident to the reader and also help you define what you need to do to succeed.
In chapter 3, Anderson discusses envisioning a reader’s response to every aspect of your communications in order to create a wholesome experience. Involved in the experience are the use of graphics, word choice, communication’s structure and anything else that might impact the audience’s feelings about your documents.
He continues to explore ways to make effective communications by organizing your communication goals. A way in which to figure out your goals is to state the purpose of your writing. In what and how will your communication help your readers? Anderson suggests to find out key areas of your audiences attitude towards the subject. He goes even further to examine their attitude towards you and the organization.
Also he writes to find out how familiar the readers are to the subject of your communications.
While determining your reader’s tasks and what information is needed for you to either educate or persuade your audience, you should name their goals using verbs that describe practical applications to the task. Another important point in this chapter is that there are four ways readers search for information and knowing this can help you construct your writing into something that will be helpful to the mass audience as a whole. Some readers examine a reading thoroughly, while others read scanning for key points. Some might seek only some information relevant to their desire, while others will read searching for instructional guidance.
Anderson states that it is important to think of who is going to read your writing. Keep in mind that more people might read your writing than you ever thought. Some of the readers could be what is known as phantom readers. Also think if there might be others that will read it in the future. Basically Anderson directs us to the sticking point of his main argument spread out throughout the book. Keep a reader-centered approach to become an effective a successful professional career communicator.
TO: Professor Ellis
FROM: Yevheniy Matveychuk
DATE: 9/22/14
RE: Chapter 3: Defining Your Communication Goals
When you are communication with someone your first focus is to question what are you writing and who is it for? Once your audience and topic is identified it is important to understand who the reader will be so that you can kind of judge what persuasion techniques might work with the person if your goal is to be persuasive. You will ask yourself what is the reader’s level of understanding of the subject you’re writing about and what is your level of familiarity with the reader and the reader’s job title. This will help shape the level of formality that your letter will be presented with and the tone of the letter.
TO: Professor Ellis
FROM: Paige Donaldson
DATE: 9/22/2014
RE: Chapter 3 Defining Communicating Skills
In Chapter 3 defines your communication objectives so you will be able to make decisions in preparing your communication to the reader. Chapter 3 is broken down in guidelines much like the other chapters to help make decisions about the content and design of your communications. Guideline 1 focuses on what you want to happen while the readers are reading. Guideline 2 defines your usability goal to analyze your readers reading task. Guideline 3 defines the persuasive goal meaning this looks deep in the readers attitude and mood. Guideline 4 identifies the reader’s important characteristics, and Guideline 5 states for the writer to study the context in the way the reader would. Guideline 6 and 7 basically covers the touching up before sending your information out to be read. To understand your readers and their context focus on what you want to happen while your reader is reading.
To: Professor Ellis
From: Aaron Munoz
Date: Sep 22nd, 2014
Subject: professional communication
This week we read Andersons 3rd chapter “Defining Your Communication’s Goals”. This chapter was mainly about the importance of communicating and its many factors that form a good communication skill. one of the things that Anderson emphasizes the most is knowing your reader. you can write a incredible peace writing that you believe is persuasive and professional. but if the reader has different mindset from you which is the case most often your writing will not be effective. the main reason for this factor is the readers culture. the main lesson thought in this chapter is to put the reader first and imagine that you are that person, or group.
To: Professor Ellis
From: Elena Prokhortseva
Date: 9/22/2014
Re: Goals for better communication
In chapter #3 Anderson talks about ways of improving your ability to write successfully. In order to do so a writer has to define his/her reader and to be focused only on the reader. One of the important tasks is to learn whatever is possible about the reader. This will benefit in creating a mental movie of him/her in the act of reading. Of course it’s not possible to predict what is your reader will think but it’s a way to use your imagination of what reader is looking for.
TO: Prof. Ellis
FROM: Amit Rabadia
DATE: 09/22/2014
RE: Anderson’s Chapter 3 Summary
In this chapter “Defining Your Communication’s Goals“, Anderson discusses one of the guidance to have effective communication by have to set the goal of the communication. Some of his guidelines he broke down into were to describe the task of the communication that will help the reader, describe the way you want your communication to alter, Describe your reader’s professional characteristics, Describe your reader’s cultural Characteristics, Learn who all your readers will be, . Describe the context in which your reader will read, identify any constraints on the way you write and identify your communication’s stakeholders. Overall, this chapter is essential getting to start making our communications’ documentaries.
TO: Prof Ellis
FROM: Muhammad Javed
DATE: 9/22/2014
RE: Communication Goals
In this chapter i have learn to determine what your communication must do in order to be useful to
your reader. Define the way you want your communication to be persuasive to your reader and many more. In order to communicate we have to follow few guide lines like to describe our reader tasks and identify the major kinds of information your reader wants from your communication. These are the main and important guide lines we have to follow. By learning the communication skills i would not have any difficulty in the future.
TO: Jason Ellis
FROM: Khalil Joseph
DATE: 09/22/14
RE: Defining communication goals
This chapter was basically about the ways you can define your communication skills in which we would discuss our purpose, the various useful communication skills that we can use to convey our goals to our readers, creating a persuasive way of conveying the subject to the reader, and your readers profile on the topic in which you are discussing. For example you would start off by figuring out what is the purpose of what you’re writing, who you are writing it for, and what you expect to gain from writing what you are writing. Also you would have to know what your readers attitude toward what your saying is so you can tell whether you need to work hard to change their mind to agree with your subject, or if they already agree with you build a stronger relationship with them so that they will be even more on your side.
MEMO
To: Prof. Ellis
From: Robert Plummer
Date: 9/22/14
RE: Technical Communications Chapter 3 Summary
Chapter 3 of the Anderson’s Technical Writing book returns to the critical point that your writing must be tailored to the needs and goals of your readers. Your readers are the ones that are dependent on your writing and what information is contained in it as a way to seek help and solve problems, so if it is not suited to their convenience or explicitly addresses their issues, they are likely to be frustrated and get nothing out of it. In addition, it is not only the readers that you are anticipating that will read your writing, but also the potential and unaccountable readers that will likely be of a much greater magnitude. Structuring your writing for a specific audience can be useful, but structuring it in a context that is understandable by an unknown third party is almost guaranteed to help even more people.
To: Professor Ellis
From: Adeola Gbamuse
Date: 922/2014
Subject: How to Achieving Communication Goals
Chapter 3 of the book talks about defining your communication’s goal. This chapter is all about relaying information to a more targeted goal. The book helps us by tell us to remember to have focus points in our speech not only for the readers but for ourselves. For reaching our communications goals, we need to provide information which will be easily understood by readers. Anderson guest “the goals of workplace communications are to help and influence readers” It is important that our communication is accepted by our readers and also that they are satisfied with it.Ultimately our communication goals are only reached when our audience receives the message clearly with understanding.
TO: Prof Ellis
FROM: Makylah Rodriguez
DATE: September 22, 2014
RE: Communication is the key
In chapter 3 it is all about communication and how it relates to the reader. I agree with some very key ideas that this chapter has. One this chapter gets you to think in a way where you put yourself in the readers seat as oppose to the writer or presenter. Identify what message you are trying to convey to your audience. A good point that is raised in chapter 3 is looking at your work like a movie. This gives you a board view of what you are trying to portray and it also allows you to put yourself in the readers position where you may be able to anticipate what questions may arise.
TO: Prof. Ellis
FROM: Jose Estrada
DATE: 09/22/2014
RE: Technical Communication
In this chapter 3, Communication is key for writing. Readers have to understand what’s written. Writers have to write in a way where readers have to understand. Defining your communication’s goal to your reader are; Who am I writing to? How does the reader read? How would the reader feel upon reading it? Does it work for others to read like the reader? Questions like these would pop out in mind when writing to someone or a group. Always think of reader, it helps if you know their reading ability.
TO: Prof. Ellis
FROM: Pei Yun, Lu
DATE: 09/23/2014
RE: Anderson’s TC Chapter 3 Summary
The key to have a successful communication goal we need to first define our communication goals. In order to well define our goal, it is important that we first help our reader reach his or her goal. In turns, we can achieve our task or goal. Anderson gives five guidelines in the following to give a better understanding on how to define our communication goals.
First, and for most, we need to always keep our readers in mind. We need to understand what are our reader’s immediate goals: identify the major information they expect from you, know the role of your reader. For example, we need to identify if the reader is a decision maker, adviser, or implementers, and we can adjust our communication accordingly. Second, make your communication be as persuasive and useful to your reader as much as possible. We need to understand our reader’s current attitude toward our communication; however, it doesn’t necessarily mean to change their minds. In fact, we can adjust our way and how we introduce the communication accordingly, such as expressing and addressing the negative or positive part and reinforce it with compelling strategies. Furthermore, we need to make sure we fully aware of our reader’s profile. Ask ourselves questions such as, “what is their job title? how familiar is he to your topic? how’s the relationship between you and reader? his personal, and cultural characteristics?” These are the important questions to define a successful communication. Third, we need to identify who all our readers will be. Thanking about the phantom readers and future readers who might view communication without your knowledge. In fact, workplace communications are frequently forwarded to another reader. Therefore, it is always important to write in a way to fulfill those “unseen” reader’s needs and expectation. On top of that, we need to pay attention to the complexity of our audience. People respond differently; we need to keep all aspects into account when drafting a successful communication. Fourth, understand any relevant elements that might factor in our communication. For example, think about what your reader will only read, or receive, from your communication, and how they will feel about it. Five, identify those people who will be directly or indirectly affected by your communication and what are their view on it.
In conclusion, we need to always keep our readers in mind when we are planning our communication. Provide a useful and persuasive communication to our reader is not only essential but also practical. However, always ask for help when you are not sure and not know how to provide a well-plan communication. Most importantly, we must follow work ethical standards to treat our reader fairly and respectfully.
TO: Prof. Ellis
FROM: Ekue Mensah
DATE: 09/23/2014
RE: Anderson’s TC Chapter 3 Summary
In chapter 3, Anderson guides us to learn the skills needed to define our communication’s goals. In doing so, Anderson suggests five objectives to be followed: the first one is determining what your communication must do in order to be useful to your reader, then to define the way we would want our communication to be persuasive to our reader ,to gather the information about the readers that enables us to predict how he or she will respond, to identify elements of our situation that could influence the way we write and the way the readers responds, to identify elements of our situation that could influence the way we write and the way our readers respond, to identify our communication’s stakeholders in writing ethically at workplace. To learn how our communication must be useful, Anderson proposes to determine the reader’s task, to identify the major kinds of information the reader wants from our communication, to describe the way our reader will look for the information and will use them. For our communication to be persuasive, Anderson suggests to describe the reader’s current and previous attitude and how we want them to be shaped after reading our communication. He also suggests to find why the readers holds his or her attitude. To help create a profile of our readers, Anderson suggests to describe their professional role, personal, cultural characteristic, and finally to learn who all our readers will be. These are some of the guidelines that Anderson offered for effectively defining our communication’ goals.
To: Professor Ellis
From: Nilda Correa
Date: October 31, 2014
Subject: Chapter 3, Defining Your Communication’s Goals
In chapter 3, our objectives are how to make your communications useful, how you want your communication to be persuasive, analyze your reader so you can predict how they will respond, what elements about you can influence your writing and the readers response and finally writing ethically. Anderson gives us plenty of guidelines that help us along the way so we can focus on what the reader wants to know instead of focusing only on what we want to say.
Chapter 3 is on to define your communication goals. In this chapter you learn to determine what your communication must do in order to be useful to your reader, to define the way you want your communication to be persuasive to your reader, gather the information about your reader that enables you to predict how
he or she will respond, how to identify elements of your situation that could influence the way you write and the way your reader responds, and to identify your communication’s stakeholders.