Tips on Giving Instructions

The most important tips to remember when you are giving instructions are:

1. Where you need to, feel free to give reasons for your instructions - they can help your audience understand why they are doing things

2. Repeat important instructions if you have to

3.    Be direct, write as if you are talking directly but informally to your audience

 An Example of a set of instructions with tips on how they work

Text highlighted in Pink is an example of giving reasons for your instruction

Text highlighted in purple are examples of saying something more than once if it is important

Note the tone of the piece is informal but aimed directly at the reader

This is how I would give instructions to someone who knew something about cooking but had never baked an apple:

Use a fresh eating apple for this dish - the cooking apples can be a little bitter

Use 1 apple per person as a desert

You will also need a tablespoon of sultanas for each apple, and a level teaspoon of brown sugar for each apple.

Turn the oven onto Gas mark 6, 220 degrees Celsius about ten minutes before you start

Take the apples and remove their cores

Put each apple in a jacket of foil, fill the empty core with sultanas and sprinkle the brown sugar over the top.

Fold the foil jacket over the apple to seal it in

Place the apple(s) in the oven and bake on a constant temperature of gas mark 6/220 degrees Celsius for about twenty five minutes

Eat as soon as the twenty-five minutes is up

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