Project: Process Analysis

100 points

(Minimum text length: 350 words)

A Process Analysis Describes How Something Was, Is, or Will Be Done

Your task in this project is to describe or analyze how something is done, not to instruct your reader on how to do it. You will report on how others do something or how something occurs through a natural process that involves no human participation whatsoever. In either case, you are only informing your readers, not directing them.

Moreover, a process analysis may involve an explanation of how something has been, is being, or will be done, so that its time frame need not be limited to the immediate present, which is really the only time frame of instructions. For example, you could explain how your neighborhood crime watch unit came into existence and currently operates or how such a unit, now in the planning stage, will be organized and function in the future. In short, you can describe a done deal or one that is still under construction.

Avoid All-Too-Familiar Topics

As in the case with instructions, your first responsibility is to select a topic that is not commonplace (how teeth decay), hackneyed (how blood circulates), or trivial (how cats meow or dogs bark). Rather than write on something you and millions of others learned from a high school biology text (osmosis or photosynthesis), write on something you believe is fairly unique to your own experience. Explain, for example, how flooding in your area in Broussard was brought under control by improved drainage, or how your fellow citizens in Duson plan to set up and operate a volunteer fire department, or how the Zoo of Acadiana in Cade, which you visited last fall, came into being and developed to its current size.

If you can not think of something from your personal history, at the very least find a topic that, as Shakespeare would have it, has "a local habitation and a name." Do not describe how a bridge is constructed; explain how the new Camellia Boulevard Bridge across the Vermillion River in Lafayette was built. Do not explain how hurricanes develop and cause damage; describe how Rita sprang up, severely damaged south Louisiana, then petered out as it traversed the state on its northeastern trek.

Research May Be Involved

Clearly, some topics will involve history and must be researched, because, as noted above, some process analyses are descriptions of something that happened in the past, perhaps even the remote past. Just remember that while the goal of instructions is to complete a task in the here and now, a process analysis often focuses on something that has already occurred, continues to occur, or is yet to happen.

If your topic does involve research, you will have to document your work. You need to acknowledge your sources and, in the process, let your readers know where you got your information so they can check your facts or learn more about your topic.

Whatever that topic is, I must approve it, and you may not change it unless I approve the change. In either case, I will only approve your topic no later than one class meeting before the submission of your project.

Review the Differences between Instructions and a Process Analysis

Before you begin this project, look again at Chapter Eight. Note that instructions and process analyses share common features, including a minimal three-part structure (introduction, main body, and conclusion). Also, both involve steps in a time or space continuum, and both describe a process.

But there are basic differences. Instructions normally use step-by-step lists, use a second-person perspective, and are written in the imperative mode. In contrast, a process analysis depersonalizes the experience. As the writer, you do not directly address the reader in the second person, nor do you expect that reader to participate in the process you are describing. You write from a more formal, third-person perspective, normally use the declarative mode, and, depending on your topic, are sometimes forced to use the passive voice. Also, while in instructions it is virtually mandatory to use graphics to illustrate steps, in a process analysis, again depending on your topic, you may have a much more limited need for graphics or a need for graphics of a different type. The bottom line is that you are not instructing; you are reporting on something that involves or did involve or will involve a process.

Submission

You may go over this assignment with me at any time up to the project's submission date. Remember, too, that when you submit your work you must provide both ms. and c-r copies plus a title page.