Tips on giving explanations

The most important tips to remember when you are explaining are:

1. Try to give context to your explanation - because an explanation is about providing information to aid understanding, the more you can set it in context, the easier it will be

2. Remember that you will always have to make a few assumptions about your audience. This is because it is impossible to explain every feature of every thing you have to explain. Test out your assumptions on yourself before you let the explanation go to a reader

3. Remember how important it is to give information to aid understanding. A little bit of detail can indicate a lot, and factual detail can be important in giving your audience a clear sense of what you \want to explain

An example of an Explanation with some tips on how it works

The text highlighted in pink is an example of giving context to your explanation

The text highlighted in purple are examples of where we needed to make a few assumptions about our audience

The text highlighted in orange is an example of giving information to aid understanding

This is how I would explain to someone the way we wrote this on-line learning package

 We started with learning materials in various areas of GCSE English, all on paper

Then we converted the paper materials to an electronic format that we could make Internet Web pages with

When we had done this, we had written material on a screen, but no pictures, sounds or video to make it more interesting

The next thing we did was re-design the materials so that we could make use of pictures, sound and video, and so that we could link different parts of the package to one another

It took three of us about six months to re-write the materials, then another two or three months to link everything up using Internet pages, and then three or four more months to add the pictures and other elements

When we had done this, we tried the materials out on students, and they suggested some changes

Finally, we put everything together and issued it through the internet. From start to finish it took three of us about a year and a half from the start of the project to getting everything published

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