Technical Writing 5
Written Assignment 5
Activity 9.4
Assume that you are a manager or supervisor with a new employee. Explain to the employee in writing how to carry out some simple operation
Instructions on How to Operate a Snapper Riding Lawn Mower
The following are the instructions for ensuring safety and efficient operation of the newly acquired snapper riding lawn mower by the company.
1. Ensure that the mower is in a good working condition by ensuring that the machine is physically and technically fit for the job:
a) Ensure that the dip stick indicate appropriate level of the oil in the engine.
b) Ensure that the fuel gauge indicates that the fuel is more than a quarter of the tank full.
2. Get yourself into a sitting position on the operator’s seat with your right foot on the brake pedal but doo not press.
3. Disengage blade gears by pulling the blade gear lever towards the arrow facing backwards till it clicks to confirm the unlocking of the gear wheels.
4. Disengage the wheel gears by moving the longer wheel gear located next to the seat on the right hand side by moving it to a central location while holding the clutch situated just below the steering wheel.
5. Pull the choke on the dust board till it clicks to confirm the blocking of the carburetor’s air hole.
6. Insert the key and move it in a clockwise direction to start the engine.
7. Once the engine starts press the acceleration pedal on the left foot for faster combustion and preparation of the machine.
8. Engage the blade gears by moving the blade gear lever frontwards till it stops.
9. Engage the wheel gears too by moving the gear level frontwards while holding the clutch to the position indicated “F”
10. Press the acceleration pedal to maw faster. Hold the clutch and press on the brake pedal to stop. Move the wheel gear lever to the position labeled “B” to mow backwards.
Activity 9.9 p 209-212 of technical English
Answer each of the four questions on page 212 in a separate well-developed paragraph. Number the paragraphs to correspond to the question being answered.
The following procedure explanation is excerpted from, The Shoes of the comic Ocean by Carl Sagan Read the selection in small groups or as a class, respond to the questions for discussion.
The description is used frequently to explain mechanisms:
How they look
They look like beams with diverse directions of both converging and diverging sections of rays. The divergence in rays emanates from the broader perspective on which the rays are directed on the earth’s surface.
What they do
They form shadows with objects on the surface of the earth. The shadows results from the obstruction of the rays and the beams that leave the opposite end without light. The sections without light are either observed as invisible or dark.
What they are made of
They are made up of rays reflected from different directions. The significant aspect of the rays’ reflections is that the rays are also deflected on hitting the surfaces and forms modifications on the images.
What their components are
Their components are smaller packets of light, the pixels and the sticks in relation to the shape of the earth’s surface. Their major component is also the shadows that define the angles and lengths in the broader perspective of the earth.
How the components interact to allow the mechanisms to function
The components interact through different processes such as reflection, diffraction and obstruction. When the beams are parallel towards the objects which are the sticks, the rays become also parallel and the result is the absence of shadows. The parallelism between the rays and the objects result into no obstruction. The light rays meet with the objects at different positions to form angles of different sizes which can be used to calculate differences in lengths.
References
Picket N, Laster A, & Staples K (2001). Technical English: Writing, Reading, and Speaking, 8th ed., by New York: Addison Wesley Longman
