Define any technical terms or concepts used within the extended definition.

1027.1.1 : Understanding Purpose and Audience

The individual writes with a purpose for a given context and target audience.

INTRODUCTION

Technical definitions (i.e., extended definitions) are an important form of professional writing because they help communicate ideas to specific audiences. Employing techniques that result in clearly defined terms, concepts, objects, and processes is essential for ensuring the writer and the writer’s audience have the same foundational knowledge. Definitions provide context and clarity to a text, acting as one of the writing strategies that contribute to the overall success of an informational or persuasive text.

In this task, you will choose a field-specific professional term or concept and define it by first identifying what class it resides within (i.e., the general context or category the term belongs to, such as “food group” for the term “protein”); next, explaining what characterizes and differentiates the term or concept within its class; and finally, describing an example of the term or concept.

REQUIREMENTS

Your submission must be your original work. No more than a combined total of 30% of the submission and no more than a 10% match to any one individual source can be directly quoted or closely paraphrased from sources, even if cited correctly. The similarity report that is provided when you submit your task can be used as a guide.

You must use the rubric to direct the creation of your submission because it provides detailed criteria that will be used to evaluate your work. Each requirement below may be evaluated by more than one rubric aspect. The rubric aspect titles may contain hyperlinks to relevant portions of the course.

Tasks may not be submitted as cloud links, such as links to Google Docs, Google Slides, OneDrive, etc., unless specified in the task requirements. All other submissions must be file types that are uploaded and submitted as attachments (e.g., .docx, .pdf, .ppt).

A. Explain the purpose of writing this extended definition for your intended audience.

B. Describe the intended audience of your extended definition.

Note: The description could include details like what kind of work the audience does, their level of expertise, what sort of organization they work for, etc.

C. Compose an extended definition (suggested length of 2–3 pages) for a technical term or concept from a professional field for your specific audience described in prompt B. In your definition, do the following:

1. Identify the term or concept.

2. Identify the class to which the term or concept belongs.

3. Explain two elements that characterize the term or concept within its class.

Note: These elements may include the historical background of the term or concept, the causes or effects related to the term, whether the term or concept represents a problem or solution, advantages or disadvantages related to the term or concept, applications of the term or concept, additional classes or categories to which the term or concept could belong, etc.

4. Provide one specific example of the term or concept.

5. Define any technical terms or concepts used within the extended definition.

6. Include one reference for further reading about the term or concept.