Teacher Notes on Instruction-Writing Exercises

Exercise 4: How to make cranberry sauce

Context for this case:

Prerequisites:

Three incremental versions of cranberry instructions.
Guidelines for student reference.

Cognitive Apprenticeship Features:

Iteratively refines a flawed draft.
Problems are simple yet authentic.

Supporting References:

Good instruction guidelines.
Cranberry bag (optional).

Relevant CA Content Standards

Goal:: To apply the guidelines to improve a draft set of instructions, then make a second pass and improve them again in other ways.
Strategy:: This is the first nonworked example. I ask students to revise this draft recipe in two stages to more clearly reveal the layers of improvements needed. Two-stage revision also shows the typical iterative process in which a technical writer improves a draft in some ways and thereby discovers further flaws and hence further ways to improve it.
FIRST STAGE:
This example is scaffolded but not worked: only the places for problems and solutions are marked, but the analysis of version 4A of the cranberry sauce instructions is left for the students. They need to review the text with the guidelines at hand and look for three obvious guideline violations.
(1) This is a story, not a list. All steps should be presented in overt list format to make them easy to find and use.
(2) "Taking about 4 cups..." is not an overt command and does not start with an action verb. Students should identify (highlight) the action verbs throughout this draft and then revise the sentences into verb-first commands.
(3) Not quite so obvious as (1) and (2) is the presence of irrelevant text here. Version 4A is very wordy. Students should trim away the spare words here and in every step to make more concise instructions. Version 4B implements these three improvements to 4A.
COMPARATIVE WORD COUNT:
One common but beneficial side effect of editing, of making these three first-stage improvements, is that the text gets shorter. A text can certainly be too short, and hence obscure or incomplete (see stage 2 below). But in general a shorter version of the same instructions is better than a longer one because
(1) there is less to read, so reading is faster and easier for users, and
(2) a higher percentage of words is (usually) relevant and useful than in a wordy version. We want to use all the words needed to do the job but we want every word to work...none should idly fill the page. Comparative word count is thus a simple, approximate metric for several aspects of text usability.
Have students count every word in version 4A of these instructions for cranberry sauce (my count: 91). Then consider version 4b, which solves the three problems noted with 4A but, as STAGE 2 reveals, has further problems of its own. Nevertheless, even at this half-done stage, we have created much shorter instructions by our editing. Have the students count the words in version 4B (my count: 37). Version 4B has less than half the words of version 4A, yet it is much more clear and explicit.

SECOND STAGE:
Version 4B again has the location of (new) problems cued, but without answers worked out. Every problem passage here violates the guideline that "each step [is] precise and complete enough to be followed." Needed details were edited out of 4A along with the extra words, leaving 4B concise but too incomplete to help (or even allow) readers to carry out its (now overt) steps. Specifically missing are (one for each cued problem):
(1) Amount. "Some water, enough sugar" should each specify 2 cups.
(2) Time. "Boil for a while" should specify 5 minutes.
(3) Conversion. Cranberries are used by volume (4 cups) but sold by weight. To prepare for this step when shopping, the reader needs to know how to convert cups to pounds (4 cups = 1 pound), a crucial detail. In cooking, as in science, units matter. Sharing a cranberry bag (which now contains only 12, not 16 ounces) reinforces this point.
(4) Manner. Again, we need to restore the "uncovered, very gently, without stirring" method details that are an important, not irrelevant, part of this recipe's step 4.

STUDENT VERSIONS:
Unlike Exercises 1, 2, and 3, both student version 4A and 4B are unworked examples. Both have problem locations highlighted by scaffolding. Version 4B incorporates the solutions to 4A's three problems in its own text and exposes four fresh problems in turn. I suggest using the word count exercise as a revealing transition from 4A to 4B.
ANNOTATED VERSION:
This version shows the solutions for both the 4A and the 4B problems integrated into the same instruction text (without scaffolding). This is the goal toward which student editing of 4a and 4B leads. (A second word count reveals that the final version has about 52 words, up from too-short version 4B but still less than 60% as large as 4A.)

Case:

Student version 4A:

(4A) How to make cranberry sauce (first version)

You can make a very nice
whole cranberry sauce by
placing 2 cups of water in
a saucepan and then stirring
into the water 2 cups of
sugar until the sugar itself
dissolves.  Next boil the----------------PROBLEM:  [not an overt list]
the water-sugar mixture for              SOLUTION:
5 minutes.  Taking about
4 cups of whole, raw cranberries---------PROBLEM:  [not a command]
(which is about the same as              SOLUTION:
1 pound by weight) and
washing them lets you add
them to the boiled solution.
If you simmer them-----------------------PROBLEM:  [many extra words]
(uncovered, very gently,                 SOLUTION:
without stirring) until
thick, about 5 minutes,
you will have cranberry
sauce.

Student version 4B:

(4B) How to make cranberry sauce (second version)

Place
    in a saucepan and
    stir until dissolved:
    some water---------------------------PROBLEM:  [how much?]
    enough sugar-------------------------SOLUTION:

Boil
    for a while--------------------------PROBLEM:  [how long?]
                                         SOLUTION:

Wash
    and add to the sugar water
    4 cups of raw cranberries------------PROBLEM:  [how to convert?]
                                         SOLUTION:
Simmer
    until the sauce is thick,------------PROBLEM:  [what manner?]
    about 5 minutes                      SOLUTION:

Annotated version:

(4) How to make cranberry sauce (combined version)

Place
    in a saucepan and
    stir until dissolved:
    2 cups of water
    2 cups of sugar

Boil
    for 5 minutes

Wash
    and add to the sugar water
    4 cups of raw cranberries
    (about the same as 1 pound)

Simmer
    uncovered, very gently,
    without stirring,
    until the sauce is thick,
    about 5 minutes

Note:

This exercise most closely supports the following 1998 California English-Language Arts content standard(s).
Reading:
Grade 5--"Understand how text features make information accessible and usable" (p. 28).
Writing:
Grade 8--"Write technical documents...identify the sequence of activities needed to design a system, operate a tool..." (p. 51).
Grade 9/10--"Make distinctions between the relative value and significance of specific data, facts, and ideas" (p. 60).

Contact: T. R. Girill trgirill@acm.org