Friday, August 28, 2015

Definition Writing and Critiquing Assignment-JTC300



Definition Writing and Critiquing Assignment
JTC 300
Minh Anh Nguyen
If readers cannot comprehend or understand the information being presented or published in papers or textbooks, they will lose interest in reading these papers.  Readers have to look up every other word in the dictionary and they will not learn anything from these sources.  Therefore, writers must consider this issue when they write any papers.  Writers should provide as much information or definition as possible to help readers understand any technical terms or words that can potentially be difficult. Three types of definitions commonly used in technical writing are: parenthetical definitions, sentence definitions and extended definitions.  
The purpose of this assignment is to find all three types of definitions in my resource material for my technical report. The topic of my technical report is how to perform software testing. I found three types of definitions that related to my topic in “The Art of Software Testing” textbook.
A parenthetical definition is a short explanation of a word or phrase placed inconspicuously in a sentence. Three examples of parenthetical definitions, which are copied directly from the textbook:
1.      An inspection or walkthrough is an improvement over the older desk-checking process (the process of a programmer reading his or her own program before testing it). Inspections and walkthroughs are more effective, again because people other than the program’s author are involved in the process.[23]
2.      For these reasons, we will discuss the process of non-computer based testing (“human testing”), before we delve into the more traditional computer-based testing techniques. [21]
3.      Providing that we are not analyzing an error found by an end user (that is, the error was found by a test case), we should realize that something valuable has happened: We have written a successful test case. Why was this test case successful? Can we learn something from it that will result in additional successful test cases, either for this program or for future programs? [175]
These examples of parenthetical definitions need no improvement because they are used to explain words that need clarification but are not the main focus of the document. These parenthetical definitions are worded so that they quickly explain a term and are placed in parentheses immediately following the word being defined. The informal definitions are short phrase.
There are times when a few words are not enough to explain a technical term.  In this case, the sentence definition would be used because it can provide the additional information needed to help increase comprehension.  Sentence definition is more formal explanations or clarifications than parenthetical definition. It is an explanation of a word using one sentence.  Three examples of sentence definitions, which are copied directly from the textbook:
1.      Testing is the process of executing a program with the intent of finding errors. [6]
2.      A good test case is one that has a high probability of detecting an as yet undiscovered error. [20]
3.      Module testing (or unit testing) is a process of testing the individual subprograms, subroutines, or procedures in a program.[91]
These examples of sentence definitions need no improvement because they describe principles of testing and words being defined.  Sentence definitions distinguish the terms being defined from other words, and allow the readers to compare the words to terms they may already know and help to improve comprehension.
In technical writing, sometimes, a term is often very complex and important to the document. As a result, it may need the entire paragraph or more to help explain the term. This is when an extended definition is necessary.  Extended definition is the use of a paragraph or more to expand on a word that may be difficult to understand.  It is usually starts with a sentence definition, but then expands on the word by providing additional sentences.  Three examples of extended definitions, which are copied directly from the textbook:
1.      In a walkthrough, a group of developers—with three or four being an optimal number—performs the review. Only one of the participants is the author of the program. Therefore, the majority of program testing is conducted by people other than the author, which follows the testing principle stating that an individual is usually ineffective in testing his or her own program. An inspection or walkthrough is an improvement over the older desk-checking process (the process of a programmer reading his or her own program before testing it). Inspections and walkthroughs are more effective, again because people other than the program’s author are involved in the process. Another advantage of walkthroughs, resulting in lower debugging (error-correction) costs, is the fact that when an error is found it is usually precisely located in the code. In addition, this process frequently exposes a batch of errors, allowing the errors to be corrected later en masse. Computer-based testing, on the other hand, normally exposes only a symptom of the error (the program does not terminate or the program prints a meaningless result), and errors are usually detected and corrected one by one. [23]
2.      Module testing is largely white-box oriented. One reason is that as you test larger entities such as entire programs (which will be the case for subsequent testing processes), white-box testing becomes less feasible. A second reason is that the subsequent testing processes are oriented toward finding different types of errors (for example, errors not necessarily associated with the program’s logic, such as the program’s failing to meet its users’ requirements). Hence, the test-case-design procedure for a module test is the following: Analyze the module’s logic using one or more of the white-box methods, and then supplement these test cases by applying black-box methods to the module’s specification. [92]
3.      Decision coverage is a stronger criterion than statement coverage, but it still is rather weak. For instance, there is only a 50 percent chance that we would explore the path where X is not changed (i.e., only if we chose the former alternative). If the second decision were in error (if it should have said X<1 instead of X>1), the mistake would not be detected by the two test cases in the previous example. A criterion that is sometimes stronger than decision coverage is condition coverage. In this case, you write enough test cases to ensure that each condition in a decision takes on all possible outcomes at least once.[46]
These examples of extended definitions need no improvement because they are used to define terms with a very detailed explanation using examples and visuals. They provided answers to the following questions: 1. How does it work? 2. What does it look like? 3. What does it do? 4. How it is used? 5. What is its origin and background?
Technical definition is a very detailed description of a term. Sometimes, when writing a document writers have to use some terms that might be unknown to the audience, but these terms are needed to understand the author's idea. The length of the definition depends on the complexity of the technical term and the audience for which is designed.  Parenthetical definition is used to define a simpler term with a short description enclosed in parenthesis immediately after the term. Sentence definition is used to define more complex terms in couple of sentences. The type of definition writers choose for their papers will depend on the word being defined and the overall purpose of the document.










References:
1.      Myers, G., & Badgett, T. (2004). The art of software testing (2nd ed.). Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons.



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