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Click on each question to check your answer.
1. What are the four key concepts in understanding the writing process?
The four key concepts in understanding the writing process are contextual factors (the situation), genres and registers (the writing format and formality), discourse communities (the communicators in your group), and rhetorical situations (the ways you can persuade your audience).
2. How is credibility measured?
Professional confidence, ethical character, and capacity for caring for others are measures of credibility.
3. What are the four major steps in the writing process?
There are four major steps in the writing process: prewriting; organizing and outlining; drafting; and revising, editing, and proofreading.
4. What does prewriting involve?
Prewriting involves gathering ideas and establishing the purpose, audience, scope, and channel for the message before writing starts. These steps help writers plan the message for the situation and the reader’s needs.
5. What are some things you need to consider before choosing a medium or channel for message transmission?
Many things need to be considered before choosing a medium or channel for message transmission: accuracy, speed, cost, permanence of the record, message detail, importance, privacy, capacity and constraints, audience size and location, required level of formality, feedback immediacy, level of control, channel richness, and organizational preferences.
6. Why do you need to consider your audience when writing a message?
It is important to consider your audience when writing a message so that you include appropriate details, use the appropriate channel, and adapt the message accordingly.
7. What is outlining and why is it important?
An outline is a point-form skeleton or framework of the document before writing starts. Outlining helps to ensure the document is complete and to identify mistakes in logic and coherence.
8. What is writer’s block and how can you overcome it?
Writer’s block is a temporary inability to express one’s thoughts because of a lack of inspiration. Ways of overcoming writer’s block are start early, talk it out, skip around, take a break, practise freewriting, and adopt a positive attitude.
9. How can you effectively revise your message?
Some effective ways of revising a message include using a paper copy; reducing your reading speed; looking at the document as the reader, not the writer; polishing in three stages using the content-organization-style (COS) method; doing a style edit; reading your draft aloud; and using spell- and grammar checkers.
10. If you are writing in a group, how can you write effectively?
Effective writing strategies you can use if you are writing in a group include active listening, having a team coordinator, doing up-front planning, and agreeing on a writing style. You can also choose a specific strategy for collaborative writing (sequential integrating writing, sequential single writing, parallel simultaneous writing, and reactive integrating writing), so everyone understands the process. Collaborative writing tools (e.g. groupware, wikis, virtual offices, and enterprise collaboration software) also help writers work together. It’s important to foster a spirit of co-operation to get the most of the experience.