Technical Language IV

A strategic plan is a tool that helps an organization to make a strategy to achieve a certain goal. In order to do this process there are some point to make, which are:

Vision: Is a long term visualization of the organization in the future.

Mission: Is the purpose of the organization in terms of its vision.

Values: Are the principles that guide and describe better the organization relations.

Objectives: Are the desired achievements the organization wants to have in a medium to long term.

Strategies: Is the methodology taken in ways to achieve the organization’s guidelines.

The SWOT analysis is a tool that helps the organization know its Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats in order to achieve its objective by retrieving internal and external information.

First we must point out the elements of a paragraph, which are: The Topic Sentence, Mayor supporting ideas, and minor supporting ideas. Usually the topic sentence is located at the beginning or in the first lines of the paragraph but this can change depending on the author. The topic sentence is the one that gives you the main idea of the whole paragraph. Mayor supporting ideas are topic related sentences that give more detail to the main idea. Minor supporting ideas give the main idea details which are not indispensable like examples.

But be careful because sometimes the main idea must be inferred by the reader and must not be confused with a supporting idea.

Summarizing is to take the essential idea of a whole text, or even several ones, by writing it down with your own words; “general idea in brief form” according to Webster’s. This makes it naturally a lot shorter than the original text. Also this makes an overview of the whole text in just a few words. You can even summarize complete books with this tool.

It is recommended to use this tool when you want to establish a background or a overview, describe a common knowledge from various sources of a topic, or to determine the key idea from one source.

Paraphrasing is to explain with your own words a document made by other author. In which way you present a completely new document, usually shorter than the original one, and emphasizing more the main idea of the source. It’s different from summarizing because it explains also the supporting ideas and not only exposes the main idea, because it could be said is a preview from the source document.

I prefer more this writing tool because it helps you retain better the concepts in your mind and helps you writing a more understandable document for yourself or even for others from complicated sources.

Quoting is the use of another author’s words exactly as he said them and giving him credit for it. Usually is used to support or contrast ideas from one author to another for further discussion in a written document. A problem this writing tool may have is something called the misquotations, it happens when the credit of a quotation is given to a wrong author; which can be by mistake or, less common, deliberately.

In my opinion, I don’t usually use this kind of tool because sometimes the phrase you want to use is to long so I ratter paraphrase or summarize the text.