Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:1395] Re: IFETS-DISCUSSION digest 203
From: Lawrie Hunter (lawrie@topaz.ocn.ne.jp)
Date: Fri 16 Mar 2001 - 21:34:06 MET
From: "Lawrie Hunter" <lawrie@topaz.ocn.ne.jp> Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:1395] Re: IFETS-DISCUSSION digest 203 Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2001 09:34:06 +1300
Greetings friends,
Thanks for your energetic and stimulating postings.
Re recent postings about narrative
and what narrative in fact is,
this is something which I
as a teacher of writing
have long struggled.
In my teaching I seek to distill
the structure of information
rather than the structure of documents
for my students.
Once we have agreed upon the structure of the information
(systemic functional linguists call it 'knowledge structure')
we can proceed to concoct a document structure that suits our content.
It is indeed difficult to characterize structure of information
rather than document structure, but doing so is essential to good writing.
Here's the point I would like to make: narrative is a kind of
document structure, not a kind of information. The underlying information
structure in narrative is sequence. Sequence type information is very
interesting and useful, but it is relatively lacklustre unless it is
situated in some broader, uh, background/scenario/intention.
And in this light, it seems to me that the question about how
we can generate a language that will support web based instruction
(or whatever kind) is actually a question of how we can situate
the learner (the reader, the intaker) in the information that will
be presented in the document, so as to empower the learner to navigate
the information wittingly. Which is the same question we have
always faced as writers, as teachers, as storytellers....
I believe this to be the key question in document design.
ciao
<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>
Lawrie Hunter
Professor, Engineering English/Critical Thinking
Information Systems, Kochi University of Technology
Kochi, Japan
http://www.info.kochi-tech.ac.jp/lawrie/
Office: lawrie@info.kochi-tech.ac.jp
Personal: lawrie@topaz.ocn.ne.jp
<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>
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