Looking into chapter 17 of the Technical communications book I'm starting to more fully realize the scope and purpose of the research project we're doing in class. In the book it is written, "informational reports share one goal: to describe something that has happened or is happening now" (Markel 467). How interesting it is that I'm in a research team and we're doing a report on somethings. It's almost like I was meant to read this chapter!
In the book there a lot of pointers on how to create a good report. To begin with it needs to
provide clear, accurate, and specific information to an audience" (Markel 467). The first thing that strikes me is the last part of this quote from the book. Audience. In the project we're working on in class our primary audience is the same person who gives us a grade. Our teacher and supervisor.
Now I don't think this is bad because there are of course several instances in the professional world where reports will need to be made to a specific person. In my life I've completed a lot of reports like this. Ever since I can remember I was writing essays about stuff and I knew that the only person who would be reading it was my teacher. In some ways however I felt like it was really unnecessary to create such a document just for one person. I feel like an informal letter or a small meeting would function just as well.
Don't get me wrong. I'm glad I had the writing practice because today I know I'm a better writer than I was as a kid. It's like what we discussed on the first day of class for English 301: how do you get better at writing/technical communication? practice doing it.
Only when I was in high school did I start having to create more interesting reports for a more diverse audience. I remember doing some short presentations in science classes. These were always very informal. While some may have considered them "unprofessional" they were still very informative and I did my best to keep it humorous when possible.
Honors English is where I really started making use of my technical communication skills. There were a lot of papers, a lot of peer reviewing, and of course many oral presentations. Not to mention the plethora of reading. I think what I learned most from all that practice was that you can write infinite words about a subject if you know what you want to say.
Last year I was in APA 200; an Asian Pacific American Studies class. For our final project we had to do what was called an "oral history paper." Basically I had to find someone who was Asian/Pacific/American, conduct a length interview, and write a paper about him or her. It wasn't easy. I got my interview done early enough but I had no idea how to create a 12 page paper out of that information. I needed a thesis of some kind to get me going but I had nothing. Eventually I created a semi-bullshit thesis by connecting the interview to a book we had read in class and once I did that then the paper wasn't too bad.
In this research project I'm working on now I find myself in a similar quandary. I don't really know what kind of a thesis we'll have for our document. What'll probably have to do is analyze the data collected from not only myself but all of the team members and then come up with a thesis, and work with it as a team.
I think part of the goal of our research project is to create a recommendation report. So basically we're going to tell our supervisor what we think the Institute of Humanities Research can do to be a better organization. We will need to justify this through our research.
I’m hoping my team will be able to make some good observations
over the next week or so. If we do, we
will be able to create something we can work with.
Tune in next week for more about adventures in English 301. Just kidding next week is
S P R I N G B R E A K
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