• Time Required
• 10–12 hours, including reading time

Welcome to Week Five of the course. This week we will focus on writing instructions, a task that you’ll be asked to do frequently in the workplace and in other settings.

For your Instructions assignment, you will explain how to complete a food-related task that uses the object you focused on in your Technical Description. For instance, if you described a Keurig Machine in your Technical Description, your Instructions assignment could focus on how to prepare a cup of coffee with a Keurig.

Holidays & Events This Week

International Talk Like a Pirate Day is Monday the 19th. Arr, not the most serious holiday.

Here are the important events coming up this week:

• The Autumnal Equinox is Thursday the 22nd.
• Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, begins at sunset on September 25th.

If you observe one of these holidays and need me to adjust your due dates, send me a message in Canvas. If I leave out a religious holiday that should be included, please email me so that I can add.

 

Objectives for this Module

After completing this week’s activities, you address the following course objectives:

• Analyze the rhetorical situation and determine the appropriate audience or users of written communication, considering the needs of global audiences and people with disabilities. [CLO 1]
• Use conventions of various workplace genres, such as proposals, instructions, correspondence, reports, and slide decks, with understanding of how the genre conventions can be used as heuristics and as principles of arrangement. [CLO 4]
• Collaborate with classmates in planning, researching, writing, revising, and presenting information. [CLO 5]

Activities to Complete

📚 To Read This Week

1. Chapter 20 of Markel & Selber, “Writing Definitions, Descriptions, & Instructions,” pp. 561–569
2. Managing Paragraph Lengths video (3m 20s) 
3. American Omelet Instructions (Student Example)
4. Cast Iron Skillet Instructions (Student Example)

📝 To Write This Week

• Begin work on the Instructions assignment, using these additional resources:
  • Instructions Project Criteria
  • Tip Sheet: Instructions
  • Instructions Self-Check
• Try out strategies from the course by submitting these activities:
  • Try-It #9: Introducing Your Instructions (Tuesday)
  • Try-It #10: Analyzing Design in Instructions (Thursday)

💬 To Discuss This Week

• Check in with your Accountability Group, according to the agreement that you have made. Use whatever tool your group has agreed to. Remind your group that Try-Its and Check-In Surveys have a 5-day grace period and must be submitted by September 28.
• Post any questions you have in the General Q&A Discussion Board in Canvas. If you have a private question, send me an email at tengrrl@vt.edu.

 

📓 To Check-In This Week

• Fill out the Week 5 Check-In Survey to let me know how you are doing in the course.

 

Photo Credit: Instructions by Ewen Roberts on Flickr, used under a CC-BY 2.0 license.