To: Ryan Marks From: Tom Dougherty Subject: Rhetorical Analysis of Science Fair Fun Booklet Date: January

22, 2014 The purpose of this memo is to evaluate the effectiveness of the Science Fair Fun booklet, published in December 2000, in communicating to its selected audience various ideas and resources for developing environmental science fair projects.

Summary
Overall, I believe that the document was effective in relaying its purpose to the intended audience of 6th through 8th graders and their teachers, although I did find a few questionable choices from a design standpoint that I will discuss below. In order to properly assess the success of this documents technical communication, I have focused on six main areas of emphasis, which originate from Mike Markel in his book, Technical Communication.

Addresses Particular Readers

This document does an excellent job at targeting its intended audience from the very beginning. Immediately after the title page, two sections titled Note for Teachers and Note for Students indicate that the particular readers of this booklet were students in grades 6 through 8 along with their teachers. The Note for Teachers section describes how topics in the booklet are not really explained in much detail since students are expected to have already learned about these topics in the schools curriculum. This statement appears to further distinguish an intended audience since readers who have not yet encountered this booklets terminology may be drawn away from using it. The targeted audience is indicated very clearly from just this one page of the document.

Helps readers solve problems

The content in this booklet helps one sector of the reading population, the students, get started on developing an environmental science fair project, and the other sector, the teachers, frame their curriculum around a stable structure. This booklet is very effective in satisfying both parties needs. The entire document is rich in helpful content that students can use for their projects, including the Sample Projects section which stimulates students by asking various thoughprovoking questions for different topics. The Resources section toward the end of the booklet can prove helpful for both students and teachers since it provides further sources of knowledge.

Reflects an organizations goals and culture

The organization responsible for this booklet is the EPA, or Environmental Protection Agency. Although this organizations goals and culture are promoted throughout the document, the location where they are most concentrated is in the orange textbox titled What is EPA on page 5. This box makes it clear that the EPA, specifically the subdivision OSW, is dedicated to responsibly managing hazardous and non-hazardous waste, and thus protecting the health of both people and the environment. I think that this one small section that is dedicated to spreading the agencys values and efforts does a great job at exposing children at a relatively young age to an

organization that they may not yet be familiar with. It also empowers them to further the EPAs interests by learning about the 3 Rs and implementing them into science fair projects.

Is produced collaboratively
Although the individual contributors are not explicitly stated, it can be assumed that a wide range of people worked to complete this booklet. The EPA is credited with the development of this resource at the top of the title page, and given the size and structure of such a government organization, many people assuredly collaborated on the various elements of the document. These may have included at the very least separate teams responsible for the visuals, resources, glossary, as well as the main content. At the bottom of page 13 is a references page which indicates that at least three other contributors outside of the EPA were responsible for providing their knowledge on the topic.

Uses design to increase readability

One broad area of the document that I feel is very effective in some instances but also lacking in others is in the overall design of the booklet. For the most part, the organization of this document is near flawless, with bolded headlines preceding every section and subsection as well as an effective table of contents. Individual textboxes such as the What is EPA and What to Do if a Project Does Not Work sections do a great job at sectioning off non-essential, supplemental material that can be read whenever desired. Even the orange color scheme used throughout the booklet for headings, textboxes, and background color serve to provide some consistency and good visual stimuli. One strategy that I believe may not work in this document is the use of cartoonish and sometimes obtrusive images. While I think that most of the images match up very well with the nearby content and are not randomly thrown on the page, sometimes it seems that there are simply too many clip art type visuals that prevent this booklet from becoming a truly professional looking product. An example is on page 2 of the document where the text is placed on a wavy, Post-It note type paper, which really only seems to slant the words and make them more difficult to read. While these images do make the booklet more fun and friendly, I feel that the students at the upper end of the intended scale (8th graders) may already be too mature for these colorful pictures.

Consists of words or images or both

As was discussed in the previous section, this booklet utilizes both words and images to achieve its purpose. Although, as I mentioned above, I have some problems with the use of cartoonish images for the intended audience, I do think that the words and images work well together. Every time there is text discussing a given procedure or sample experiment, there is almost always an accompying image directly supplementing it. The effective combination of both words and images really helps make this document a lot easier to read and understand.

Conclusion
For the most part, this booklet satisfies almost all of Markels requirements for successful technical communication. Aside from a few design errors, I feel that the EPA has created a great tool that students and teachers alike can benefit from in the classroom.