Matrusri Engineering College

(An Autonomous Institution)

(Approved by AICTE & Affiliated to Osmania University& NBA Accredited)

Common to All Branches

Subject :Effective Technical Communication in English Name of the Faculty:
Mrs.Dr.B.Chandana

UNIT 3

Information Transfer
Presenting huge data to audience/reader is sometimes cannot be avoided. In such kind
of situation large data can be presented clearly and meaningfully with the aid of non-
verbal items like maps, charts, tables and graphs.

Converting data into diagrammatic representation requires different set of skills.

While converting data in diagrammatic representation one needs to know the following:

The form of diagram , that suits the data better

How to convert the data into a diagram or text

The steps and nuances involved in it.

Simultaneously one should be able to decode the diagrammatical presentations into

either oral presentation or written document.

Uses:

I. This kind of representation of data is one of the vital aspects of reports and proposals.

II. Non-verbal items are especially meant to convert the data into diagrammatic form.

III. It is especially in the context of…

narration

physical and process description

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listing, classifying, comparison and contrast

shows cause and effect relationship

generalizes from numerical data

Advantages of graphical representation:

Quick viewing of a large amount of data at one glance

More accuracy of data is possible through graphs

Comparison, contrast and division can be done in one go

More effective than written text

Stimulates quick analytical approach to huge text

Before transferring the verbal data into pictorial form analyse the data, choose an
appropriate graphical representation.

There are different kinds of graphic representation:

Maps and plans

Tables

Graphs

Tree diagrams

Pictograms

Flow charts

Maps and plans: Maps are representations, usually on a plane surface, of a part of the
earth continents, countries, cities, villages, small areas and even buildings. They show
outlines of areas within them and feature such as roads, coastlines, rivers etc.

Information Transfer (Non-verbal to Verbal):

Manufacture of Paper
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Paper is chiefly used for writing. The raw material used in the manufacture of paper is
wood, grass, bamboo and rags. There are several processes by which the raw material
is converted into pulp. Most commonly the raw material is cut into pieces and then
immersed in water to convert it into pulp. The pulp is then mixed with lime for whitening
it. This pulp and lime mixture is boiled at high pressure. The pulp is next passed through
wire meshes. The paper sheets are removed from the mesh while it is still wet. These
wet sheets are passed over heated rollers to remove the water and the paper is dried so
as to make thin sheets of paper.

Change the above content into flow chart

A2. Read the following passage and complete the table

Dialect is a form of a language spoken in one area which may be different from other
forms of the same language. Each language has dialects which change every few
kilometers. India is a multi-lingual country. Each state follows its own language as
official language. For example, Marathi is the official language of Maharashtra, while
Ahirani, Wharadi, Konkani and Malwani are its dialects. Several languages in India are
spoken but do not have any script. In Karnataka, Kannada is the official language. Tulu
is spoken in Karnataka but has no script. In England, English is the official language
while Scottish, spoken in Scotland and Welsh spoken in Wales are dialects of English.

State Official language Dialects Spoken /Without script

Maharashtra Marathi

Karnataka

England

Ans.

State Official language Dialects Spoken /Without script

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Maharashtra Marathi Ahirani, Wharadi, -

Konkani, Malwani

Karnataka Kannada Tulu No script

England English Scottish, Welsh -

A1. Transfer the information about the Water-cycle given in the flow chart into a
paragraph:

Ans.

Water-Cycle
It is common knowledge that the sunrays absorb water from the surface of the
Earth — namely seas, streams, rivers and other such water bodies. This gets converted
into water vapor and thus rises. As it goes higher, it becomes cooler and begins to
move. Various particles of vapor collect together and condense to form clouds which
when become too heavy are difficult to sustain. The condensed vapour in these clouds
then comes down in the form of rains and fills the various water bodies from where once
again it evaporates with the heat of the Sun and thus, the cycle of water is maintained.
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Information Transfer (Non-verbal to verbal)

Subject : Effective Technical Communication Matrusri Engineering College

Ans. THE JOURNEY OF MANUSCRIPT

From the given flow chart, it is very evident that the information pertains to the
journey of a manuscript from its initial stage to the final printing of a book or a magazine.

Manuscripts are collected from both students and teachers. They are thoroughly
screened and edited, where necessary additions, alterations and omissions are made to
the copy. A rough draft is then prepared after which the manuscript is sent to the printer
along with a dummy. Then comes the stage of proof correction. After the corrections are
made and the manuscript is proofread, it is sent for final printing.

A2. Here are some tips about keeping healthy as given in a science magazine. Read
and write in the form of Do’s and Don’ts (table):

You must include vegetables and fruits in your diet and drink a lot of water. You
should avoid junk food and aerated water. You shouldn’t sit for long periods of time.
Rather you should exercise regularly. You shouldn’t ignore the importance of good
breathing habits. Try breathing deeply whenever you think of it. See to it that you sleep
for at least 7 hours a day. In fact, you should avoid irregular timings.

Ans.
Do Don’t

Include vegetables and fruits in your Consume junk and unhealthy food especially
diet. street food.

Drink plenty of water. Drink aerated water.

Exercise regularly. Sit for lengthy periods of time.

Try breathing deeply whenever Ignore the importance of good breathing.

possible

Sleep for at least seven hours a Sleep at irregualr times.

day.

Presentation skills Do’s & Don’ts

It is very sad that so many influential, bright-minded presenters with a deep expertise in
their fields lose their audiences due to inadequate presentation skills. It is also about
respect for the people in the audience, their time should not be wasted. Both event
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organizers and presenters need to do everything they can to add value to the audience.
So here are some useful tips that I have accumulated over the years.

Advice for speakers

Do’s

Think carefully before the event: what does this audience want to hear? Hint:
they are not interested in hearing how great you or your company are, they want
to learn new things that can make them more successful.

Use story-telling and your passion. Find a story about people (yourself and
others) that illustrates your message and tell it with your passion. Storytelling
always beats lectures!

Tell the audience not to take notes, say that you will email or post your
presentation summary online immediately afterwards.

Keep an eye contact with the audience and move around the stage, don’t hold on
to the speaker stand. Use a clicker to control your presentation. Remember that
70% of your communication is in your body language!

Engage the audience during your talk, at least every 10 minutes. For example by
letting them vote on a question with their hands or green/red cards
or mentometers.

Slow down, speak slower than usual and add pauses for emphasis. This enables
the audience to take in what you are saying and increases their understanding. It
also gives you more respect. Never try to cram a 30-minute speech into a 20-
minute time slot, that is a big no-no!

It is important that you have a monitor with your slides in front of you, so you
don’t have to turn around to see what is on the big screen. Also valuable is to
have your laptop in front of you in presenter mode so that you see both the
current slide and the next slide in front of you, it makes it much easier to make
good transitions in your talk.

Be visual, use pictures and videos that illustrate your points. Read my lips: less
text, more visuals! You can do great presentations without any visuals, but then
you have to be a master storyteller.

Design the slides so that they are easy to see from the back of the room. This
means very big text sizes and images that fill the whole screen. The classic
mistake is to sit in front of your laptop screen and design the slides for that arms-
length distance, so step back 2-3 meters and see if you still can see everything.
Also, avoid using borders, they are just wasted space. Remember: there are
never any borders around the movie at the cinema!
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Make your slides in the 16:9 format. The old standard 4:3 is totally
outdated, just look at your TV at home.

Use a dark background on your slides, as it is easier to read for the

audience and much better for the video cameras. (Yes, black text on white is
considered easier to read, but that applies to large amounts of texts and we are
not using that here, are we?) Also, a large projection of a white slide next to
yourself in a dimly lit room will make you look darker and remove the focus from
you.

Avoid monotony by using variation and surprises in your slide styles

during your presentation.

Engage the audience. Ask questions and have them put their hands up, in
order to raise the energy level in the room.

Focus on 2 or maybe 3 things that you want to talk about, never more than
3 things. Explain the challenge you are working with and then tell the story and
visualize the solution.

Build your presentation based on the classic drama formula: Start with a
Set-up, then Present the problem(s), then proceed to the Confrontation and
finally the Resolution. This has worked for all of us humans for thousands of
years!

Hire a speaker coach that helps you improve your body language and
voice.

Use a spell checker on all your slides. Takes only a minute, saves your
face.

If you present in another language than your native, consult a language

tutor to improve your pronunciation as much as possible. Getting your message
out is about being understood and respected.

Test your presentation on other people beforehand and videotape

yourself. Listen to their feedback and watch yourself: would you understand and
appreciate your presentation?

If you have a Q&A session after your talk, announce that it will be short,
maximum 5 minutes and that you will show a wrap-up or case story illustrating
your message after the Q&A session. That way you avoid draining the
enthusiasm of the audience by long-winded Q&A sessions and you keep the
audience in the room

End your presentation by showing a slide with a key question, or action

point aimed at the audience, to encourage discussions afterwards. Also, show
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you contact details and the link to your presentation summary on your blog, or on
an internet service like Slideshare.

Create a presentation summary that can be emailed or put on your home

page or blog. The summary should not be all your slides, nstead, put together 3-
4 slides that explain your key messages with pictures and very short texts. Add
text notes to the slides with key messages and URLs to web sites.

Don’ts

Don’t read word by word from your script. You will sound like a robot and miss
the all-important eye contact with the audience. Use stiff cue cards with key
words and starter sentences instead.

Don’t read out loud from text bullets in your slides. If you have to use text bullets,
keep them very short and very few per slide, then first let the audience read it
and then expand on the subject using your own words.

Don’t use complete sentences in your slides. Your voice shall tell the story, and
the slides shall only support it.

Don’t speak with a too low or monotonous voice. If people can’t hear you well at
the back of the room, or if you don’t have any energy in your voice, you will lose
the attention of the audience in a minute. Hire a voice coach!

Don’t talk too fast and try to cram a 45-minute presentation into a 30-minute time
slot by speaking at a machine-gun pace.

Don’t start talking immediately on top of your slides. Let the audience interpret
the slide for a while, then add your insights.

Don’t use hard-to-read fonts or garish backgrounds.

Don’t use cute or unusual photos that are not illustrating exactly what you are
talking about. It distracts the audience; nobody will hear what you are saying.

Don’t use effects, such as texts that tumble into the slide or any other disturbing
transitions. The interesting stuff should be in your content, not in the effects.

Don’t use any acronyms without spelling them out and explaining what
they mean.

Don’t waste your audience’s time by presenting the history and

organization of your organisation. Unless it is essential to understand your
presentation, which is very, very seldom.
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Don’t use a corporate slide template that displays the logo on each and
every slide. Such templates should be banned everywhere, and they add no
value to the audience. Remember, the audience is not there to learn about your
company. The only place you can put your company logo is at the end, together
with your name and contact details.

Don’t mention tips verbally like “be sure to check out the website
www.fancynewstuff.com, it has great features” without displaying a slide with
both a picture of the web site and the URL in big letters + a note stating that the
URL will be in your posted presentation.

Don’t hide behind the computer or speaker stand. Make sure the audience
see you and maintain eye contact with them. But beware of pacing around the
stage.

Don’t stand in the projector beam, ever. It is totally distracting for the
audience to see garbled text projected all over your head.

Don’t end by simply summarizing what you have talked about. Instead,
show your passion for your message and that you want the audience to succeed
as a result of the message of your talk.

Visual Aids
A visual aid is an object or representation that may be used to clarify or enhance
understanding of a concept or process. The best way to ensure success in learning is to
present information in different formats for different learners. Use of visual aids also
plays a major role in the process of technical communication.

Visual aids accomplish several goals:

 Make your speech more interesting

 Enhance your credibility as a speaker

 Serve as guides to transitions, helping the audience stay on track

 Communicate complex or intriguing information in a short period of time

 Reinforce your verbal message

 Help the audience use and retain the information

Why Visual Communication Is Important

Subject : Effective Technical Communication Matrusri Engineering College

Visual communication is the art of passing information to people by the use of gestures,
images, signs, posters and short films advertisement among others. Visual
communication is the most effective way of passing information because the human
mind processes things in images. The majority of people respond quickly to visual
images instead of texts. Any business needs to understand the cognitive functions to
maintain customers. Any form of advertisement should use images and graphics
because it will have a great impact on boosting your business.

The use of visual communication is massively growing among business. Over 84% of all
marketing strategies use images, popular GIFs, graphics, animations, and signs among
others to pass information. Visual communication has more impact in passing
information to people. The following are reasons as to why visual communication is
important.

1. It saves time

It is easier to process a visual signal quickly than to read a sentence of a paragraph full
of text. An image will pass a lot of information within a short a time because one image
can have a thousand words. Research shows that the brain processes images 60,000
times faster than texts. With this background information, it will save you time when
using visuals to communicate to people. Rather than loading an advertisement with
words, it is highly beneficial to utilize visuals to effectively pass a message within a short
time.

2. It is clear

Visual communication improves the clarity of information. You easily fall in love with a
book of a movie because of the graphics used on the front cover or trailer respectively.
This is the same way customers fall in love with products and services depending on
how they are advertised by using images and graphics. When using images for
business advertisements, use simple and clear graphics that will pass the same
message to the targeted audience to avoid confusion.

3. It helps in achieving consistency

This is mainly achieved by using same colors of the original product or company to
advertise. The use of logos and consistent colors boost the brand image of the
business. The company’s colors should be used in all form of marketing and
advertisements. Also, using consistent images, logo and colors make it easy for people
to identify a product with the company. Build brand awareness of your company or
organization by using visual communication.

4. Gives better retention of information

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Since the human brain processes information in image form, a person will be able to
retain visual information for long. People easily forget what they hear or read easily but
retain images for long. This is because images are stored in long-term memory, and
words and texts are stored in short term memory. A study conducted on active learning
showed that 10-20% of the participants were able to remember spoken and written
information while over 50% of visuals and images was remembered. It is important to
aim at retention of information when passing marketing products and services.

5. It is simple

The illiterate can understand visual communication hence makes it an effective

communication method to all. Its simplicity makes it easy for people to understand the
information. Coming with an appropriate image for an advertisement may take time, but
the end result is usually simple and understandable to all groups of people. The main
reason as to why you still remember road signs is because they are simple, clear, and
memorable.

6. It is flexible

Flexibility in visual communication makes it better than verbal communication. For

instance, if you are looking forward to advertising a product to millions of people across
different cultures, you may consider using images and graphics. This is because they
are flexible and can be understood by different people. Verbal communication will be
limited to language, and some terminologies may not be similarly understood by
different cultures. Images are more flexible than words.

7. It is effective

Visual communication is one of the most effective ways of sending information. The
main reason lies in the cognitive function of the human brain. Nowadays, images and
graphics have flooded the advertising field because of the effectiveness of visual
communication. The mind remembers images faster than words or texts.

8. It is popular

People love watching images, GIFs, graphic videos rather than listening to words or an
advertisement. If you are running a business, you will easily catch the attention of
potential customers by using visuals, images, GIFs in advertising. Social media
platforms like Facebook encourage ads to have fewer words and more graphics. Also,
visuals stimulate the emotions of the people making them respond quickly to an
advertisement.

Conclusion
Subject : Effective Technical Communication Matrusri Engineering College

The above is about the main importance of visual communication. Visual

communication is important just like using the ezTalks Meetings for communication.
People pay more attention when communicating with people they can see rather than
just using a telephone or emails. Visual communications have a positive impact in
boosting your business. Start applying visual communication techniques on your
business and you will get positive results.

Different types of Visual Aids:

Objects

 Photographs, drawings, diagrams, and schematics are the types of graphics that
show objects.

 If you are describing a fuel-injection system, you will probably need a drawing or
diagram to explain the system properly.

 If you are explaining how to graft a fruit tree, you will need some illustrations of
how it is done.

Numbers

 Numbers are used while presenting data and statistics.

 If you are discussing the rising cost of housing in a particular city, you could use
a table, with the columns showing the data for five year periods since 1995.

 The rows could be for different types of housing.

 You could show the same data in the form of bar charts, pie charts, or line
graphs.

Words

 Graphics are also used to depict words. You have probably noticed how
textbooks put key definitions and examples in boxes with words.

To further understand visual aids, let us answer the following questions:

 When to use?

When Illustrations are very effective when there is a mass of statistics and complex
ideas to be represented. Statis-tical data is best explained through tables, graphs,
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charts, maps, diagrams, or photographs. As already mentioned, text and illustrations

are complementary in technical communication.

Hence, whenever the information to be communicated is too complicated or An

illustration is a visual representation such as a drawing, painting,

photograph, or other work of art that stresses subject more than form.

 How to use?

The following are some guidelines to use illustrations effectively. The illustrations should
be

• neat, accurate, and self-contained

• appropriate to the data

• labelled completely

• self-contained

• integrated with the text

• placed as close to the first reference as possible

• sized appropriately so that they are clear even upon reproduction

• such that they create a good balance between the verbal and the visual

 Why to use?

Why Visual communication has more impact than verbal communication.

Using illustrations has many advantages:

• Arouses interest and focuses on essentials

• Leads the reader to quicker comprehension

• Supports and reinforces words

• Saves much time and effort in explaining and interpreting complex ideas

• Explains the data in much lesser space but with greater accuracy

• Simplifies numerical data

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• Emphasizes and clarifies certain facts and relationships

• Makes the descriptions vivid and eye-catching

• Renders a professional flavor to the communication

 What are the types?

Before these questions can be answered, and before the actual work of selecting and
designing the illustration can begin, the following preliminary steps must be taken.

First the material must be arranged in some sort of systematic order:

a series, a distribution, or some other logical arrangement.

Next, we must be thoroughly familiar with the material and be aware of the implications
of its use.

The final step involves a decision about the type of illustration to be used.

Several factors are considered for a decision of this kind, such as the nature of the data,
the anticipated use, and the intended audience. These factors are usually interrelated.

The type of data will often aid in the selection of the appropriate type of media.

Types of Visual Aids Models

People speak to audiences every day in schools, offices and meeting halls. Using visual
aids helps a speaker to illustrate points to the audience more easily and effectively. For
an audience, visual aids can make speeches easier to follow and more interesting.

Posters

Slide Shows

Models

Videos

Presentation Software

Transparencies

Handouts.

Using Visual Aids

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Here are three general guidelines to follow when using visual aids . Here are some dos
and don’ts:

 Do make a clear connection between your words and the visual aid for the
audience.

 Do not distract the audience with your visual aid, blocking their view of you or
adjusting the visual aid repeatedly while trying to speak.

 Do speak to your audience—not to the whiteboard, the video, or other visual

aids.

Using PowerPoint as a Visual Aid

PowerPoint and similar visual representation programs can be an effective tool to help
audiences remember your message.

 A maximum of eight lines of text per page will enable the people in the back of
the room to read it.

 Plan on leaving the bottom third of each page empty since it's difficult to write
legibly so far down on the page.

 Color can add emphasis and continuity but use no more than three colors per
page.

 Dark colors are best for words, use bright only for accents.

Use of Color
Primary colors are the colors from which other colors are made through various
combinations.

Secondary colors represent a combination of two primary colors, while

Tertiary colors are made from combinations of primary and secondary colors.

 Primary colors. Red, blue and yellow

 Secondary colors. Green, violet, and orange

 Tertiary colors. Red-orange, red-violet, blue-violet, blue-green, yellow-orange,

and yellow-green.

Making the effective use of visual aids:

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— If audience need it explanation for aids explain to them, lest they should
misunderstand

— Organize the visual aids as a part of presentation, fit them into plan

— Emphasize the visual Aids. Point to them with bodily ction and with words

— Talk to audience, not to the visual aids. Avoid blocking the listener’s view of the
visual aids

Your document should be visually attractive and easy to navigate. Readers are less
likely to be moved by a document that is not carefully designed and professional.