Questions Proposed:

1. What challenges does this video highlight about precision of language and communication?

2. How do you see this video relating to your Technical Description assignment?

3. Did this video change the way you view technical communication? Why or why not?

Reply to the Questions based on the video:

1. Some precision challenges that came up in the video were one, just telling to scoop up peanut butter with a knife or jelly with a knife is not specific enough. In the video, you can see this step led to the dad just taking the physical jar and planting it on the bread. Even though all of them knew what the kids meant with their instructions, you must be specific when explaining the steps. Another challenge was which way the knife was in terms of which side of the knife was when scooping up peanut butter or jelly. When in the video, you can see that the dad just throws the knife in the peanut butter jar in the wrong way, with the handle in and not out. This is another reason why you must be very precise in your steps as having the right steps can backfire if you don’t specify the right way of the knife or even the bread.

2. This video shows exactly how it would be when writing the technical description assignment because we must be incredibly descriptive as well as specific. If you want to thoroughly be descriptive in explaining how a mechanical pencil works, for instance, you can’t just be straight up and say, “You push led out and then you can write”. In the video, not stating how to scoop peanut butter or how to spread can lead to the person just physically putting the jar on the bread since they were misinformed. The same thing can happen to your audience reading your technical descriptive, they can say how do I push the lead out, do I open the pencil to push the lead out. You must be very specific in saying how you can get the lead to be out to write with it.

3. The video did change my view on technical communication because originally, I didn’t think too much about being so specific because everyone has common sense, of course, you scoop the peanut butter on the bread to make the peanut butter sandwich. However, after seeing how the instructions the kids gave just said to “put peanut butter on the bread” it made me realize how specific you really must get.  If I were in that position, I would first think oh I take the jar and put it on the bread, even though the knowledge of how to make a PBJ sandwich was telling me to scoop, the instructions didn’t say so. Even when the instructions said to scoop peanut butter and then spread it on the bread, the knowledge in my head was telling me to spread it on the face of the bread. However, based on how the instructions formatted and phrased it, it could’ve just meant for me to spread it on the side of the bread or spread it on the top of the bread since it didn’t specify to do it on the face of the bread.

Link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDA3_5982h8