Purpose:
1. My motivation to communicate in this situation is to inform individuals of the dangers of rip currents.
2. I hope that my audience will have a better understanding of beach saftey and will be more careful when they go swimming in the ocean.
3. I want to communicate this with others because I worked as a beach lifeguard all summer. I know from first hand experience how unaware most people are of the dangers of rip currents.
4. The best possible outcome for this communication would be less rescues on behalf of rip currents this coming year.
5. The worst possible situation is somone could drown because they were uninformed of the dangers of rip currents.
6. If my communication is successful it will save lives. I do not think there is anything more important than that.
Audience:
1. Some characteristics of my target audience would be weak swimmers. Sadly, minorities make up a large percentage of drowning victims each year. They would be an obvious audience of interest.
2. The audience should react in a positive manner to my communication. I would hope that they are interested in their own personal saftey and the saftey of their family.
3. I wouldnt mark anyone off my audience list. Everyone needs to be made aware of beach saftey, especially those that think they already know what they are doing.
Context:
1. This communication must be able to take place anywhere at any time. The time that it would be most important would be the summer because that is the time of year when most people come to the beach.
2. The communication should take place around the beach. This not only includes when people already have their feet in the sand, but any where you will be able to intercept beach traffic.
3. Over the winter months you will be dealing with much more experienced beach patrons (such as surfers and locals), but during the summer you will have to deal with masses of people who have never been to the beach before.
Strategies:
1. I will include a picture diagram of a rip current with arrows that represent the flow of water and other arrows that represent where an individual should swim to escape a rip current.
2. Simple terms and short text will help individuals remember some beach saftey tips.
Medium:
1. My first choice for a medium of communication would be to mass produce flyers with the above mentioned sketch and simple, easy to remember phrases.
2. Other such mediums like tv and radio would be ideal.
Arrangement:
1. I would include the sketch in the center of the flyer followed with beach saftey tips on the sides and bottom and possibly some contact information on the very bottom of the sheet.
Testing:
1. To test for the effectivness of my communication I would survey the beach for the months following my distribution of flyers and see how many rescues were made for people in rip currents. I would then compair those numbers to months past and see if i had any impact.
peer review
1. the element of purpose is covered most thoroughly because it talks about the motivation and reasons behind these instructions. Also it lets the reader know the author's credibility, and what the author hopes the reader will achieve after reading these instructions.
2. The arrangement is the element least covered because it is hard to cover that element very thoroughly. While it is stated how the instructions will be arranged, it is hard to really show what it is going to look like.
3. I have similar themes in my instructions, such as simple language to help the reader understand and remember the instructions if they dont have them with them.
4. This is a very broad topic as far as the audience goes, and it is also pretty hard to come up with a different medium for these instructions, but i suppose that the actual arrangement could be different and still be effective.
Feedback for Instruction Set
The element that was covered most thouroughly was the audience. I thought it was interesting how Luke targets weak swimmers and minorities, but he also states that he would not mark anyone off the list because everyone needs to be aware of how dangerous rip currents can be.
I think all seven rhetorical elements were covered very well. Overall I think the seven different elements were covered to their full extent.
Luke's project connects some what with my project because he is informing people of the dangers of rip current and I am teaching people how to paint a boat. So both of our project are based on water activities.
I don't think this instruction set would change much if the audience were changed, simply because the audience is such a broad amount of people. Luke directs his instruction set towards everyone who enjoys going to the beach.