Author: Nicole Ummelen
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004488731
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 232
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Book Description
People who use software manuals want to get something done. Procedural information directly supports this goal, but the use of declarative information in manuals has often been under discussion. Current research gives rise to the expectation that manual users tend to skip declarative information most of the time. Also, no effects of declarative information in software manuals have yet been found. In this study, information use and information effects in software manuals are investigated in three experiments, thereby taking different user types, different task types and different information arrangements into account. A new technique was applied: the click&read method. This technique enables the software user to use the manual and carry out software tasks at the same time while information selection and times are recorded automatically in logfiles. For the first time, quantitative data are presented about the amounts of procedural and declarative information that were selected and the times that were spent using these information types. Although procedural information is selected more often and used longer, declarative information appears to be a substantial part of the information selection. Moreover, the results show that using declarative information positively affects performance on future tasks, performance on reasoning tasks and factual knowledge.
Author: Joyce Karreman
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004483853
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 207
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Book Description
Apart from the procedural information that describes how a device should be operated, instructions for use include different types of declarative information, such as information about the internal working of the device (system information) and information about the circumstances in which the different functions can be used (utilization information). In this study, the use and the effects of system and utilization information are investigated in a number of experiments. The results demonstrate that users spend a considerable amount of time on reading each information type. However, contrary to common belief, system information has only limited effects; utilization information does not affect task performance at all. Moreover, users of instructions without declarative information are more confident in their ability to learn to work with the device and consider the learning process less difficult than users of instructions with declarative information. These results suggest that users of instructions without system and utilization information are capable to use other information sources such as the procedural information and the interface of the device to derive the required declarative knowledge.
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004653627
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004653635
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
The twenty papers of this volume - published to honour Gunnel Tottie - are of interest to everyone concerned with the study of the English language. The collection is a convincing argument for an approach to language studies based on the analysis of computerized corpora. Though this is not an introduction to the field but a series of highly specialized studies, readers get a good overview of the work being done at present in English computer corpus studies. English corpus linguistics, though basically concerned with the study of varieties of English, goes far beyond the simple ordering and counting of large numbers of examples but is deeply concerned with linguistic theory - based on real language data. The volume includes sections on corpora of written and spoken present-day English, historical corpora, contrastive corpora, and on the application of corpus studies to teaching purposes.
Author: Louise H. Cornelis
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9789042001572
Category : Dutch language
Languages : en
Pages : 316
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Book Description
The passive construction in Dutch represents a long-standing problem both in linguistics and in written communications. This book proposes a new analysis of the passive in Dutch, integrating insights from theoretical (especially cognitive) linguistics and rhetoric/composition. The point of departure is the observation that the Dutch passive has a demonstrable perspective effect in texts: the passive discourages identification with the agent, and this in fact is the meaning of the Dutch passive construction. This meaning forms the basis for a solution to a number of text problems, including the problem of how to best use the passive in computer manuals. We can also understand the passive's role in specific texts. For example, it becomes clear why policy paper writers use so many passives. Finally, in one of the case studies it is shown why passives were used differently in the NRC Handelsblad, a Rotterdam daily newspaper, and in the Parool, from Amsterdam, when they both reported that Ajax, Amsterdam's football team, became the national soccer champion.
Author: José van der Hoeven
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900448468X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 153
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Book Description
In this volume a relatively new approach to writing process research is attempted; time is included as a very important factor in describing the writing process. The link between the writing process of 12-year old students, the quality of the compositions, and writing skills is investigated in six studies, discussing the importance of genre knowledge, linguistic skills, and cognitive skills in writing. Including linguistic and cognitive skills gives new perspectives on the relationship between the writing process and the resulting composition. The concepts used in these studies are drawn from the fields of both linguistics and cognitive psychology.
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004484515
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 275
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Book Description
User manuals, reference guides, project documentation, equipment specifications and other technical documents are increasingly subjected to high quality standards. However, it is not clear whether research efforts are keeping pace with this increasing importance of documentation quality. This volume includes studies from researchers as well as practitioners, exemplifying three approaches towards document quality: • Product-orientation, with an eye for usability in various manifestations such as tutorials, concept definitions, tools for users of documentation to find information, methods of eliciting user feedback, and cultural differences; • Process-orientation, in which the quality of technical documentation is regarded as an outgrowth of a process involving sub-steps such as storyboarding, pre-testing and use of automation tools in writing and producing documents; • Professional orientation, in which attention is focused on those who create technical documentation. The volume will be of interest to a broad audience of writers, managers and trainers with technical and non-technical backgrounds, such as: quality managers; communication managers; technical communicators; trainers in computer usage; teachers, researchers and students of (technical) communication.
Author: Menno de Jong
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004488723
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 180
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Book Description
Brochures play a significant role in governmental public information provision. Every year many brochures are distributed to inform, instruct or persuade people. These brochures may benefit from a systematic design process, including applied research such as pretesting. Among communication professionals, the importance of pretesting is practically undisputed. Readers from the target audience are assumed to provide valuable insights into whether a document really works. Organizations therefore increasingly try to include a pretest in the design process of important documents. Various pretest methods have been developed and are being used in practice. However, little is known yet about the merits and restrictions of the available approaches. This book provides a framework for scholarly research into pretesting, and presents a series of studies into the validity of one particular pretest instrument: a combination of the plus-minus method and a semi-structured questionnaire. This is one of the prevailing pretest approaches in the Dutch public information sector. The validity of the pretest instrument is assessed in two complementary ways. First, the question is addressed as to whether a revision on the basis of pretest results actually leads to an improvement in the functional quality of brochures. Second, a study is presented in which text and subject-matter experts judge the importance of pretest results. The pretest instrument appears to yield a large amount and a great variety of reader feedback, which in a subsequent revision may contribute to significant improvements in the effectiveness of brochures.
Author: Annely Rothkegel
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110260271
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 280
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Book Description
The interdependency of technology and communication presents theoreticians as well as practitioners with a wide range of problems. Among the topics discussed in this interdisciplinary volume are: technological knowledge in text and context in combination with cognitive and social conditions, knowledge transfer beyond languages and cultures, the influence of the world wide web on social communities.
Author: Christopher J. Parker
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3319035037
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 144
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Book Description
This book explores the roles in which volunteered and professional information play within neogeography from a human factors perspective. The unique advantages of each information type are considered alongside how they may be utilised to create products and services delivering highly functional, efficient and satisfying experiences to their users. The overall aim of this book is to address the issue of how Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) can be combined with Professional Geographic Information (PGI) to satisfy the information search requirements of consumer-users via highly usable mashups. Firstly, this required the development of an understanding of the way different users perceive VGI and PGI in terms of its benefits to their activities and information needs. Secondly, the benefits that VGI may bring to the user experience of a mashup (which cannot be attained through the use of PGI) needed to be understood. In order to achieve this, a user centred design perspective was implemented throughout the research.
