In unit one’s final assignment we learned how to communicate one relatively complex term in our field in 3 ways (parenthetical, sentence, expanded definitions) with a specific audience in mind. Our work was further refined through peer editing with a teammate.
The term I chose to expand on was Cystic fibrosis. I selected this term because I think the ability to communicate common diseases that affect us is an important skill to have. At first I was afraid the term would be too simple. That was because I did not have a very deep understanding of the disease. Upon further research I discovered the intricacies of cystic fibrosis and even struggled to condense my thoughts. I started off by thinking about the questions I would have as a lay person about CF, amongst which were: “How is CF transmitted?”, “What are potential treatments for CF”, “What is the biological mechanism of CF?”. I brainstormed around 10 questions and categorized them by their similarities. I then eliminated questions that were too technical. In the end I had 5 categories. After placing them in a logical order I started doing research. Being an extremely well-researched topic, there were thousands of articles and webpages about CF. I picked out only the essential information from each source and compiled them to best fit the 5 categories.
My goal shifted from trying to detail every single fact about CF to focussing on conciseness. My writing partner Jobina helped me identify spots I could get rid of information that was not necessary to the understanding of CF. To illustrate, I shortened the history of CF to about half its size after removing facts like: doctors studied children during a heat wave to confirm ancient folklores of the disease and how many people today are affected by the disease. While interesting, those pieces of information deviated from the goal of informing readers about the CF’s history. A second piece of advice from Jobina was the usage of citations. There were areas where I forgot to cite because I was so familiar with the information and thought of it as common knowledge. Having another pair of eyes read my work helped me be more considerate of my audience.
In contrast to my original work, Jobina’s definitions were very concise. I gained a lot of knowledge without having to read too much. There were no spots where I felt information was irrelevant or repetitive. In fact, I thought more details could be added, especially when explaining the visual and comparing and contrasting cache memory to main memory. Nonetheless, I was intrigued by the way information was presented; the sections flowed and built on top of each other elegantly. I appreciated the use of very simple terms to define a concept that was foreign to me. Jobina chose a term that was easily relatable to and that made me think more about the everyday technology we use.
This assignment was valuable in helping me be more concise and receive feedback from my peers. I have come to realize how much work goes into educating non-technical audiences about specific things. I look forward to applying the knowledge I’ve gained here in the upcoming units and continuing to write in you attitude.
Enclosure: Jenny Zhu ENGL 301 Definitions – Revised
Jobina’s peer review of my assignment: click here