Response: Modules 4 and 5

According to the lecture, effective writing communication includes planning, writing, and revising. Therefore, we need to divide our time to accomplish these three steps. The book suggests spending one third of the time in each task. Our planning should include analyzing the situation and audience, gathering information, and organizing our ideas. Then, we would create our draft. Finally, we need to revise it by evaluating, editing, and proofreading. The revision of the document is as important as planning and writing it; thus, it should not be skipped. If we run out of time, we should at least give it a light revision. In some cases, we would be able to ask for feedback. We need to take advantage of it by asking for specific comments in the areas that we are more concerned about. When dealing with negative feedback, we should focus on how it helps us improve our writing rather than how it hurts our feelings. We can also customize planning guides for our most common documents, and use form letters. However, we should carefully revise them because the documents can end up looking disjointed and unfocused to our audience.

An important aspect in creating effective communication is document design. In order to make our paper documents interesting to our audience, we should use white spaces, headings, and lists. We should also limit the use of capital letters, number of fonts, and use appropriate margin justification. All of the above will emphasize the most important information and make our documents easier to read. When designing slides, the key is to make them simple, to the point, and attractive to the audience. Some of the most important aspects in web page design are: making the website easy to use and the information easy to find, because we need to maintain the readers’ attention.

             I would like to point out the advice from the book about how to improve our writing by following the processes used by expert writers. Like them, we need to be aware that our first draft can be revised, a big job can be divided into small pieces, and the draft is only edited when complete. We should also be clear on our purpose and know our audience. Another aspect to point out is that document design is something that we need to think about at every step of our writing process in order to effectively convey our message.