• 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

Here are the events coming up this week:

• Black History Month in American and Canada continues through February 28.
• Valentine¹s Day is Tuesday the 14th. 💘

If any of these events interferes with your work in the class, send me a message with Canvas Inbox and let me know how you need me to adjust your due dates.

 

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. 569–587
2. Managing Paragraph Lengths video (3m 20s) 

 

📝 To Write This Week

• Begin work on the Instructions assignment, using these additional resources:
  • Instructions Project Criteria
  • Tip Sheet: Instructions
  • Instructions Self-Check
  • Student Examples:
    • American Omelet Instructions (Student Example)
    • Can Opener Instructions (Student Example)
    • Cast Iron Skillet Instructions (Student Example)
    • Electric Kettle Instructions (Student Example)
    • Stir-Fry Instructions (Student Example)
• 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

• Optional ways to discuss class issues:
  • Post public questions in the General Q&A Discussion in Canvas if it can be shared with the class.
    
  • If you have a private question, send me a message with the Canvas Inbox.
  • Ask a question or make a suggestion anonymously with the Anonymous Questions & Suggestions form.

 

📓 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.