Reader Expectation Approach
In the professional world — unlike in school, college, or graduate work — no one cares how hard the writer tried nor how much improvement has been demonstrated since last time. The bottom-line question, where the quality of professional writing is concerned, is simple: “Did the reader get delivery of what the writer was intending to send?” If the answer is “yes,” the writing was good enough; if “no,” it wasn’t. Therefore, to understand the language better, we should get to know as fully as possible how readers actually go about the act of interpretation.
In trying to make of any English sentence the sense the writer intended, readers need to be able answer four essential questions correctly. If the reader gets even one wrong, the interpretation arrived at will not be the one the writer intended. The four questions:
In trying to make of any English sentence the sense the writer intended, readers need to be able answer four essential questions correctly. If the reader gets even one wrong, the interpretation arrived at will not be the one the writer intended. The four questions:
- What is going on here?
- Whose story is this?
- How does this sentence connect backwards and forwards to its neighbors?
- What word or words in this sentence should be read with special emphasis because they are the stars of this show?
"We all know these reader expectations intuitively as readers. My work helps you become conscious of them as writers."
We all know these reader expectations intuitively as readers. My work helps you become conscious of them as writers. Knowing where to put what produces for you three major benefits: (1) You will be in far greater control of your writing process; (2) you will be significantly more in control of your reader’s interpretive process; and (3) you will be led back into your thinking process, able to discover if you have actually completed your thoughts.
Scientists who have adopted the Reader Expectation Approach report a stunningly higher rate of success in securing funding for their grants. Lawyers report not only greater success but also far greater speed and less effort in producing their written products. The good people who write the laws of Canada draft all federal legislation in what they call “the old way” and then go back to “Gopenize” it in revision. In other words, this approach actually works.
Scientists who have adopted the Reader Expectation Approach report a stunningly higher rate of success in securing funding for their grants. Lawyers report not only greater success but also far greater speed and less effort in producing their written products. The good people who write the laws of Canada draft all federal legislation in what they call “the old way” and then go back to “Gopenize” it in revision. In other words, this approach actually works.
