Critical Reading Questions – Markel (2015) Ch. 20: Writing Descriptions (pp.

543-551)

Task 1: Please answer the following questions, as per Markel (2015) pp. 543-551.

1. Two Parts: 1) List the three items technical communicators often have to describe & 2) provide
original examples of each (in addition to the ones provided in the book). (p. 543)
a. Object. An object is anything from a natural physical site, such as a pen.

b. Mechanisms. A mechanism is a synthetic object consisting of a number of identifiable

parts that work together, such as a car.

c. Processes. A process is an activity that takes place over time. Descriptions of processes

explain how something happens, instead of how to do something. Bullet is fired.

2. Why are audience and purpose important to consider when crafting your description? (p. 543-
544)

You have to decide how professional the description need to be according to your audience. You
have to consider how technical vocabulary should be use, how long a sentence should be, what
kind of graph the audience will understand and in what way you explain to your audience.

The purpose is what you are going to deliver to your audience. The purpose determines the
information you need to involve, the length of the description and the detail.

3. Two Parts: 1) List the four general suggestions for crafting an effective description and 2)
provide a very brief explanation and why they’re important/necessary. (p.544 – 548).
a. Indicate clearly the nature and scope of the description. Letting the audience know what

this description is about, so that they can have a brief idea on what should they focus.

b. Introduce the description clearly. To let the audience what exactly this description is

talking about.

c. Provide appropriate detail. To help the audience understand how the process happen

clearly.

d. End the description with a brief conclusion. Remind the audiences about the important

information you expect them to know.

Task 2: Complete Exercise #5 on p. 573: Description of an object. (The prompt has been modified from
the textbook. This assignment is a practice exercise, and thus your description does not have to be too
long.)

Write a 250-word description of one of the following items or of a piece of equipment used in your
field (OR an item in your life that you’re not fully familiar with). In a note preceding the description,
specify your audience and indicate the type of description you are writing.

*Please use table 20.1 “For Object and Mechanism Descriptions” on p. 545 when writing your
description of an object.

**You can see a sample description of an object on pp. 550 – 551. BUT! Keep in mind, this sample is
an extended description. Yours, for this practice activity, does not have to be as elaborate. (Only
approx. 250 words).

a) GPS device
b) MP3 player
c) waste electrical and electronic equipment
d) automobile jack
e) Bluetooth technology

Bluetooth technology is a wireless communications technology to connect electronic devices

over distances. Bluetooth technology uses a short-range radio wave to connect electronic devices and
let a pair of two devices exchange data. Devices connected using Bluetooth technology form a piconet,
which is the RF topology. The RF topology is also called star topology, which means for all devices in a
piconet, there will be a master device hosts all the connections. The rest devices are the slave devices
that connect to the master. Bluetooth communications can only happen between master and slaves,
which means slave devices cannot exchange data directly even though they are in the same piconet. In
addition, there’s only one communication allows in a single time period, which is that master device
cannot send data to multiple devices nor receive data from multiple devices at the same time. If the
master device needs to communicate with multiple slave devices, it needs to finish data exchanging with
the current data-transferring slave device, then start a new data-transferring connection with one other
slave device.

Bluetooth technology is a durable and complicative technology. It needs the support from the
hardware and software. Hardware is basically the Bluetooth chipset. Bluetooth chipset can modulate
and transmit the short-range signal for connections. Software is more about protocols, which are the
rules about communication and format of transmitting data packages.

Bluetooth technology is now being used in many aspects. The durable wireless connecting
ability frees users from cable connections and make the users have a better experience along with the
improvement of technology.