 Lecture 5, As-Salaamu Alaikum. Welcome to the virtual university's course on Business and Technical Communication. In today's lecture, we will be looking at defining objectives. We look at the different purposes of a document which are basically the implicit purpose and the explicit purpose and we will talk about what these two different types of purposes are and how we tailor a document according to the purpose of writing the document. We will also look at why we need documents and how then depending on the need for a particular document, how we write that document. Defining the objective of your communication is extremely important as it has a strong link with the audience analysis covered in the last lecture. If you remember, we covered in the last lecture, we talked about analyzing your audience and how we would write the document according to the type of audience that we were catering to. In the same way, it is important that you know the objective of what your document is and that is closely linked to who the audience is. Obviously, the objective will have to be linked to the audience of the document. What now is the purpose for writing documents? Documents should be created for explicit purposes or goals that both the writer and the reader would readily agree on. Explicit purposes mean purposes that are clearly stated. They should be clear, they should be obvious to the reader and therefore, it is important that they are there. Although there are many explicit purposes for creating a scientific or technical document, there are four general categories of explicit purposes. One, to provide information. Two, to give instruction. Three, to persuade the reader. And four, to enact or prohibit something. What should you keep in mind when you are writing a document? You should make the explicit purpose clear at the beginning of your document in an abstract, an executive summary or an introduction or maybe all of these. Sometimes, a formal statement of objective is called for. So, you need to sometimes give the statement of objective or statement of purpose separately in your document. You may also need to identify the person, the agency or the contract requiring or authorizing the document or research. In addition to explicit goals, however, writers almost always write with unstated, but still extremely important implicit goals in mind. Implicit goals are those which are not stated as it says here. Unstated goals and most documents have implicit goals. The explicit goals we talked of earlier which are clear, obvious and implicit are those which are hidden which are not always clear to the reader, but the writer always has these implicit goals in mind. Amongst the most common of these implicit goals are to establish a relationship, to create trust and credibility and to document actions. Now, let us look in more detail as to what explicit purpose means. As discussed earlier, most scientific documents have as the principal purpose one or more of the following actions to provide information, to give instructions, to persuade the reader, to enact or prohibit something. Whatever the general purpose of an overall document, certain sections of a document always have a specific purpose. A document may have a general purpose and specific purposes for the different sections of the document. Now, in documents which provide information, generally for reports which are providing information, they could be either providing information in the form of literature reviews or by giving specifications. The different sections in these type of documents would be a background section, a theory section, one which gives talks about materials, results and tables. The statement of objective of these type of information providing documents could be something like, this document will discuss the reasons behind constructing a new trade center in Islamabad. Now, this is obviously stating the objective very clearly right at the beginning of the report or document and it is showing that the document will have some kind of information that will be given to the readers. Now, what about documents that give instructions? They could have two sections, one of procedure or one of the work plan. An example would be of the objective statement could be this document outlines a procedure for constructing a new trade center in Islamabad. Now, if you see in this example, it is very clear that the procedure is going to be talked about and not the writer is not just giving general information but is talking about specific procedures. So, it is obviously instructions that are going to be included in the document. What about the documents that are meant to persuade the reader? These documents could be proposals, recommendation reports, job application letters or resumes. The different sections in these documents would include discussion, conclusion and recommendation. Now, a point to be noted in this is that resumes would not have discussions, conclusions and recommendations. They would have a different format where your achievements are listed in a point form but the purpose is also to persuade the reader but in all the other types the proposals, recommendation reports and job application letters there would be these three sections of discussion, conclusion and recommendation in some form or the other. An example of persuasive documents is an example of the defining objective of persuasive documents is this document proposes a feasibility study for constructing a new trade centre in Islamabad. Now, it is very clear from this example that the defining objective of this document is a feasibility study. Obviously, a feasibility is meant to persuade investors to go ahead with a certain project. What about documents that are meant to enact something or conversely which are meant to prohibit something? These documents could be acceptance letters, regulations, patents or authorization memoranda. Now, documents which are meant to enact something are generally shorter. They are generally giving some kind of instruction to do something or not to do something either to enact or to prohibit and they will then not have many different sections. They will be more concise, more to the point. Let us have a look at an example. Notice could read something like construction site for trade centre ahead, no unauthorized persons allowed. Now, this is a very direct, very clear notice which is prohibiting something. So, these were the different explicit purposes of writing a document. Now, let us have a look at what we mean when we talk about implicit purposes for writing a document. Let us have a look at what we mean when we talk about implicit purposes. You need to keep your implicit goals in mind when you are writing a document. In addition to explicit goals, writers almost always write with other unstated but still extremely important implicit goals. Most all the time these implicit goals are not stated. That is what it means when we say implicit and they are always there with explicit goals. Common goals are to establish a relationship to create trust and establish credibility and to document actions. Communication not only conveys information, but also establishes a relationship between speaker and listener or writer and reader. Now, obviously, you are not only just giving information. Whenever we communicate, we have a relationship between our listener and our reader, whether it is directly or indirectly. We call this a relationship. Now, the more our correspondence with each other, the more communication there will be between the receiver and the sender. The less communication there will be, the weaker the relationship between the sender and the receiver. But as it is, there is a relationship. A well written letter of inquiry, for example, may begin a professional connection that may last for years. Many times, a long relationship is established from a letter about business communication. A short inquiry letter is there, but as a result of that, the receiver will give you an answer. You will give them an answer again, and a long relationship can be established. Readers of research papers often initiate long and fruitful correspondences with the authors. There are many times when people might read a research paper and they may have some questions regarding that and then they initiate correspondence with the writers and that correspondence becomes very fruitful and it becomes a longer-term, lasting, research-oriented relationship. So, it is important that these relationships are established if communication is to be effective. Even seemingly in-person documentation and instructions can, if written carefully to addressing a user's need, establish a positive relationship between the user and the producer of the product. Now, it is not important that all documentation is addressed directly to an audience. There is in-person documentation, there is documentation that is aimed at a large variety of people, but that is also establishing some kind of relationship between the sender and the receiver. Even if that relationship is not long-term, there is a link between them and that link is through that correspondence or through that communication. Now, why is it important to create trust and establish credibility? We talked about the importance of establishing a relationship and now we are going to talk about establishing trust and credibility which is equally important when we are writing. An underlying goal of all technical and scientific writing is to get the reader to trust the writer's credibility. If the writer's credibility is not established and the reader does not trust the writer, then the writer finds it even more difficult to write and the writer will then need to give longer explanations in order to impress his point upon the reader. Scientific and technical writing is based on precision. Accordingly, any technical or scientific documents should justify the reader's confidence in the accuracy of its content, style and organization. Also, you should carefully qualify statements that need to be qualified. This basically means that any statements that need further elaboration or that need further discussion should be discussed, but this discussion or this qualification should not be unnecessary and it should not be over long. It should be concise to the point, but it should make the point clear. Also, you should not make claims that are merely suppositions. If you are not sure of something and you are only supposing that something is true, then you should make it clear that it is a supposition. You should not write it as a claim. Also, if your reader begins to doubt your ability or intent to analyze and shape data with a minimum of distortion, the document will no longer be effective. Now, what about to document actions? When you want to document actions and you want to write about something that has happened or that is going to happen then you need to keep in mind that these actions need to be documented and the readers are going to be reading them so that they can read about how the action has taken place. Scientists, engineers and managers often use writing to create permanent records of their thoughts and actions. This way they are documenting what they are doing. A lot of this time scientists, engineers etc when they are conducting an experiment or when they are producing something then they are writing what they have done. They write their thoughts so that it becomes a document which can be acted upon in the future. One of the primary differences between most forms of written and spoken communication is that writing can be fairly permanent whereas speech vanishes as soon as it is produced. Now when we are writing something whatever it is whether it is a short memo or it is a document or it is a report it becomes permanent if that paper is saved but speech on the other hand vanishes the minute it is out of the speakers the words are out of the speakers mouth or at least they vanish once they are out of the receivers memory. So speech then is not as permanent as written communication is therefore a lot of the times actions are documented in written communications a lot of the times if a superior wants to make sure that a certain action is taken within his organization he will give that memo in writing whereas if he is giving a casual instruction he will give it in orally or in speech. So actions that are given in writing become much more permanent and they have there is more weight attached to them. And consequently technical communication is often more effective when it is written down. And it is not necessary that the action taken on it is also correct. So it is better that if everything is written down then the technical action taken on it is also correct. Instead of saying that if that thing is spoken then there is an indication of a mistake. And therefore it is important to make important observations, suggestions or objections in writing. Things which are not important you can always give verbally but important things should be made or should be documented in writing. Similarly communicate important tasks and deadlines in documents such as project plans. Now if they are deadlines that have to be met or if they are important tasks in projects then it is important that they are recorded in writing. So that there is proof that these deadlines or these instructions were given. Also keeping precise records of experiments and procedures in notebooks is crucial to a project's overall accuracy and to establishing intellectual property rights. If we do not have a record of experiments and procedures, A there is a danger that they will not be remembered. B there is a danger that they will get distorted. So if we have done any experiment or any procedure and we are not writing down how we did it then one danger is that when we do it again we will forget how we did it. The second danger is that if someone else will do it then they can do it in a wrong way. And whatever project you want to do it will be wrong. So it is very important that you write this kind of thing and make a document of it. In the modern age save it on a computer and make it in a file computer. But it is also important that you keep a backup copy of it so that if something happens to the computer then your documentation will be saved. And the third thing is that if you want to establish property rights then property rights means that if you have invented something or you have an idea or a concept which is unique for you and you want someone else not to steal it and someone else is not saying that it was our idea. So it is better that you write the entire process that you have created this way or made it this way. You experimented this way so that when someone else claims it then you have a proof that you have also done it. Now what is the importance of the statement of purpose or statement of objective? If appropriate you should state your document's objective at the beginning. This is important so that the reader knows what it is that the document is going to include. The readers of technical writing are often busy people and such a statement will alert them that it is important to read further. If you have a statement of objective upfront in the beginning then your busy readers will actually be attracted to the document and they will want to read the document. On the other hand if they feel that from the statement of objective if it is clear to them that this is not of their interest or that this document is not what really they want to read or that will benefit them then they also have the option of not reading ahead. So in this way you are enabling your audience to save their time. If you have a document that you want to read or not or it is less than its title and the picture on it is written in the author's name then you can imagine whether you want to read ahead or not. So if your statement of purpose is written then your reader will also be able to imagine whether they want to read ahead or not. So if you want them to read ahead then your statement of purpose should be so powerful and persuasive that the reader wants to read ahead. The example on the next slide from a memorandum by an engineer at a hydroelectric power plant warning its superiors of the problem that later caused the explosion in one of the plant sections provides a good example of a statement of objective. In this next example there is a memo which is written by a hydro power plant engineer to warn them that there is something in our plant because of which there can be an explosion. Let us see what this is. This letter is written to ensure that management is fully aware of the seriousness of the current erosion problem in the section 3 from an engineering standpoint. Now if you see in this example it is very clear that Akhtar Sarfaraz is warning his management that there is a serious erosion problem in section 3 and this is from an engineering standpoint. Now the management might not be engineers so it is important that Akhtar Sarfaraz has pointed this out and it is important that he has clarified in the statement of objective that this is what this memo is going to talk about. So because the management has now read this statement or statement of purpose initially it will now ensure that they read on. If any manager is telling an engineer that this problem in our power plant can be an explosion then they will read on ahead. That is why it is important that the statement of purpose is so close and whatever your main point is you are trying to tell is going to be seen quickly so that it is forced to read ahead. Now how do you actually go about defining your objectives? We did talk about this statement of objective but how do we know what our objective is and how do we define it? Let us consider the example of Ali who is a fresh graduate from FAST and he has been appointed the junior software engineer in a company called Adam Soft. Today Ali's boss dropped by, he came to him and asked him and told him that two vice presidents of Adam Soft have asked Ali for a report on his progress. Now Ali has been told that he needs to write a report on his progress. Now Ali must decide what he has to write in the report. When Ali has to write this report then this decision will also be of Ali that what should be written in this report. Ali's boss has only told that vice presidents are going to write a report on Ali's performance. Now this report because Ali has to write it. The objectives that Ali has to define. The audience of Ali knows that the audience is my manager, my boss and my vice presidents. Now if he writes his objectives clearly and precisely these objectives will then guide him through his work at writing. So it is extremely important that Ali should know what his objectives are and once he knows his objectives he should write them down. Whenever we write something that we have an idea in our mind or we have a thought when we write it on paper, then it becomes much more clear for us. So it is important that then we write down the objectives of our communication. We can always, initially when we write the objectives, we can make some changes in it but until we write our objectives will remain vague in our mind. Now so what Ali will do is that he will write down his objectives and based on his objectives what he wants to show his vice presidents that I have done this and that progress, then he will elaborate those objectives and he will be able to add more details to his report according to those objectives. When people read then they respond in two ways simultaneously. When anything is read then they react in two ways. And those two reactions are together. It is not that one reaction is first and the other is simultaneous reactions. They think and they feel. They think and they also feel. Now you as a writer need to focus your attention on accurately understanding the communication that is to be delivered and you need to focus your attention on presenting it in such a way that it is viewed favorably. Whenever you are sending a communication or you want to write it in such a way that it is read then its reaction is favorable and positive because as I said it is thinking and it is also feeling something. So both its actions are both positive Now why is the identification of the final goal important when you are writing a document? You need to think about that. You need to think why its important. We have talked about the importance of the final goal. We have talked about the importance of the objective and the objective cannot be written down. The objective cannot be identified till you know what the final goal is. So when you are defining your objectives start by identifying the final result you want from your communication. From this communication whatever you are writing what kind of action you want is your final goal and what is your final objective. Your short term objectives will be based on that objective. And doing this identifying the final result will help you remember that when you write you are performing an action for your desired result or outcome. For example the final goal could be that you want your boss to approve the project you are describing in your proposal. So this is your final goal. The objective of that proposal will be based on that the objective is that your boss accepts your proposal. So if you do not know your final goal then you will not even know the objective of that document. The objective is that you want two new people to assist you in the new project you have been assigned by your employer. Now this is your final goal. You want that you write this letter to your employer or the proposal you are writing and as a result you will get two assistants. So obviously when you know what the result is then you will start writing your document. The proposal with the whole department reduces your efficiency. If you are sharing your printer with the entire office and you want your manager to give you a new printer then you will have to write a document so that you can persuade them to give you a different printer. So the objective of that particular document will be that your manager or your purchase department can persuade you that you want a new printer. Now how do people respond when they read something? It's important that you as a writer are aware that there will be a reaction from your reader and that you are also conscious of what type of reaction that will be and how they will respond. As we said earlier people respond in two different ways simultaneously, they think and they feel and you need to focus your attention on accurately understanding what communication has to be delivered and in presenting it in a favorable way and in a way that it is viewed favorably. So as we said earlier, we need to realize what the audience is doing and what they are thinking. Now why should you identify the tasks that will enable your readers? We talked about enabling the readers earlier which means that we should make information for example accessible to them, we should make our readers strong in a way that they can understand what we have written and why is that important and how is that important? You should identify tasks that will help your readers perform better while they read. Whenever they read, their performance should be good and this is your responsibility. This is not the responsibility of the reader that they should perform better while they read. Obviously some responsibility is for the reader, if he doesn't know how to read for example then obviously he can't understand that. But we assume that what you have written is basic, you are understanding English but what is your message and how you have written it? Is that message confusing the reader or are you trying to clarify what you are trying to say? So it is important that when you are writing something then you should think about how you can write how easy it is for your reader to read. That is what we mean when we say that you should identify the tasks that will help your reader perform while they read. Basically when you are identifying the tasks, you are describing the enabling element of purpose. The purpose of your writing should be that the reader should be able to read it easily. So when you identify your tasks in your mind that you will write like this and write like this and these are our objectives then you are making it easy for your reader to understand what you are saying. At a general level, all tasks are the same for all readers. Now let's have a look at what tasks readers perform while they are reading. They perform the tasks of locating, understanding and using information in many ways depending on the situation. Generally, every reader does only one thing when he is reading something. There will be a difference in the purpose of the document and the purpose of their reading. They are finding information in that document and using that information in some way or the other. Whatever the situation will be according to them but generally, actions are the same. Whether that reader is an expert or not or a technician like we talked about in the last lecture or a manager or a layperson or even a reader, depending on the subject's knowledge, actions are the same. They will find information in that document and understand it. For example, Ali's Progress Report would be read by his vice presidents from front to back. They will read the report, they will start from the front or the first page of the report and they will read till the end. They will find the information that they are looking for and then they will use that information. They could use that information to promote Ali. They could use that information to transfer Ali to a different department. To fire Ali. I hope that is not the case though because I think Ali is a good student. It is the tasks that the vice presidents perform will be those of locating the information, understanding the information and using the information depending on whatever situation. In Ali's case, it would depend on Ali's performance because if you remember, he had been asked by his boss to write a report on his performance on his progress. So, depending on what he has written in his report, what he has said his progress is the action will be taken accordingly but the tasks performed by the vice presidents will be the same. So, basically in this lesson you have learnt to define objectives. When we talked about objectives, we also mentioned the statement of purpose and we also mentioned that it is very important that we define objectives so that our mind is clear about what we want to write. Our document has to be concise and precise so that there is no chance of making a mistake and we will know the purpose why we are writing and that is when we can define its objective. When we talked about document purpose, we decided that every document has many purposes. Some purposes are explicit, which are stated and are clear. Many purposes are implicit which are not stated directly. They are hidden in the document but as a writer you know what those purposes are and in those purposes you have to establish a relationship, you have to establish trust, you have to establish a rapport with your reader. In explicit purposes we talked about that you have to give information, you want to get instructions from your reader, you want to persuade them or you want to stop them from doing something or you want to tell them that you can do this action. These were explicit purposes and they became implicit as I said that you want to establish a relationship, trust, credibility and whatever we are establishing during this communication we have to believe in what we are hearing. These were the purposes. In this lesson we talked about the purposes, the objective of the document and we also talked about the sections of persuading, what sections are included and what are the instructions and what are the different sections. We are going to enact or prohibit some sections or not. These were the first lessons of defining objectives. In the next lecture we will talk about these objectives in more detail. In the next lecture we will look at the second part of defining objectives. Basically we will look at these things in more detail. In that lecture we will identify the tasks that will help your reader to perform while they read. In this lecture if you remember we spoke of the different tasks that readers perform while they read. They locate information, they understand information and then they take action upon that information. We will look at that in more detail. We will also look at how you want to change the reader's attitudes. Many times we have talked about a specific attitude for readers. Today we talked about that you have to write your document as per that attitude. If your readers have negative feelings or don't believe in your authority then you will have to persuade them more. If you think that you are an authority for readers and you are very credible and you don't have to establish your credibility then you don't have to give introduction. In the next lecture we will talk about how we can change our readers' attitudes. We will also talk about how we can change their attitudes according to their attitudes. We will also talk about how we can change their attitudes according to their attitudes. We will also in the next lecture learn about our readers' important characteristics. We will see that readers have different characteristics. We also will talk about how to learn who the readers are. There are a few different factors to decide that the readers who they are. If we look at those other factors we will find out who is this reader Also in the next lecture you will learn to fill out a sample worksheet that should be kept in mind when defining objectives. Now when we define objectives, we talked of the fact that we need to keep in mind what the main goal is of the documentation of the communication and then we define our objective. In the next lecture we will also learn the importance of appropriateness in business and technical communication. Now when we talk of appropriateness we basically mean what is right and what is wrong in a given situation. So in the next lecture we will look at this aspect of right and wrong in communication and also look at the fact that what could be right in one situation can be wrong in another situation. So because a lot of the times there are no rules for right and wrong. A lot of the times there are rules for right and wrong. But there are many times when there are no rules as such and the right and wrong will vary about depending on the situation. That is what we mean when we talk of appropriateness. Basically appropriateness means that we will see that what we are writing in our communication is either appropriate or not. So I hope that has given you enough information about what we have in the next lecture and you can prepare yourself accordingly before the next lecture starts. Till then, Allah Hafiz. Peace be upon you.