The purpose of Assignment 1.3 was to define a technical term using three different defining techniques. During this task, it was important to keep in mind our audience and ensure that non-technical readers could understand the terminology. I chose the word “band structure,” and created a scenario in which a professor wanted a first year physics class to understand the relevance of this definition for classifying materials.
While sounding straightforward, this assignment was much more difficult than I initially anticipated. Most difficult was being able to define the term band structure using every-day understandable language. As most first year students have no knowledge of solid state physics, I had to decide what information was relevant to include, and what would go beyond the scope of non-technical readers. While writing this definition, I realized that if I went entirely in depth then I would have to introduce far too many new terms, and would generally confuse the audience. For example, while it is important to note the the band structure of a material lives in the material’s “momentum space,” defining this space was far too complex and not completely relevant to the student’s needs as first years. It would require introducing crystal lattices, lattice constants and periodic potentials, which (while important) was not critical to my students’ understanding. This assignment became an exercise in conciseness. I had to ask myself questions such as: What was useful to my readers? and What did I want them to understand? With this new outlook I strived to make my definition as relatable as possible to my audience.
Receiving feedback for this assignment was very beneficial for my self-editing process. I’m glad that Brian was able to understand my definition, and he had good feedback on both my sentence structure and overall effectiveness of my definition. While I had been trying to keep my audience in mind while writing, I realized that I had assumed some knowledge was “self explanatory,” while it was actually critical for my audience’s understanding. For example, my photo of band structures was missing a description defining exactly what E and Eg stood for, as well as what the colours meant. Without this information, it made the diagram much less effective.
Furthermore, being able to provide feedback to Brain was an effective tool to see a definition from a non-technical perspective. My team is a very diverse group of writers, so to learn about biology terminology as a physics major allowed me to see these definitions from a different lens. Through reviewing his work, I was able to recognize when I was unable to understand terminology and pick out which parts I found ineffective. Conversely, it was great to see how he had tailored his definition to fit the reader’s learning process. He had begun by providing the etymology of the word, then explained how it worked, and then ended with why it is important to know. His overall flow of the definition allowed me to comfortably understand photosynthetically active radiation without having to go back and reread paragraphs. I realized that the definition is not only about respecting the audience’s non-technicality on the subject, but also considering how you introduce the subject to them. With this knowledge in mind, it was much easier to go back and edit my own work.
Returning to my definition after the reviewing process, I was able to identify the weaknesses in my definition and change it to make it more effective. For example, I attempted to use more concise language and have labels under my photos. Hopefully, this would nurture my reader’s understanding. I did not change too much about my definition, but I was confident that these parts I had changed would improve the readability and effectiveness of my overall definition. Additionally, the choice to add the more complex photo at the bottom was an effort for the audience to understand that although I did not include all the information on band structure, there was much more information out there that was beyond the scope of the definition.
Ultimately, I felt like this was a good exercise to see the writing strengths of my colleagues and apply critiques to my own writing. Being able to give and receive feedback was a critical step in understanding the task at hand and was useful for the editing process. While I found this assignment much more difficult than I anticipated, I can see how these processes and techniques I am learning will be useful for communication in a workplace in environment, and am glad for the chance to hone these skills.
Link to my partner’s review: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-99a-2019wa/2019/09/25/peer-review-report-for-definition-of-bandstructure/
Link to my revised definition: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-99a-2019wa/2019/09/30/revised-definition-band-structure/
My revised definition: Revised Definition-Band Structure
