Assignment Purpose
This assignment gives you experience in writing a set Instructions for a non-specialist audience. Instructions spell out the steps necessary to complete a task or set of tasks.
This assignment also offers you the opportunity to develop the following:
Written Communication Skills
In writing for a non-specialist audience, you will practice many of the features of good writing that we have identified as a class:
Clarity
Organization, including visual organization
Concision
Tasks
1. Decide on a task or set of tasks to write instructions for. Previous WR 320 students have written about:
Inserting an acupuncture needle into a trigger point planning a character strategy in a computer game soldering fine metals for jewelry trailering a horse parsing a string of hexadecimal characters to decimal numbers
The task should be one your are very familiar with and sufficiently complex to require detailed instructions.
2. Plan your draft by reviewing the criteria for success and one or two sets of instructions that you have personally found helpful in the past.
3. Draft your instructions. About 800 words.
Divide the task into two or three major sections and title them. The more specific your title is, the more helpful it will be to the reader.
Working from the titled sections, draft out as many steps as necessary for each. You may want to bullet or number the steps in each section. Anticipate as best you can what a non-specialist might need to know in order to follow your instructions.
Consider whether visual aids are necessary and what hazards might need to be avoided along the way.
Write an introduction. This is the place to provide background information and also an explanation as to why someone might want to perform the task in the first place. For instance, why in the world might someone want to transform his or her bicycle from a multi-geared bike, to a bike with a single gear and without the capacity to coast? What are the benefits to completing your set of instructions?
