Bloom’s Taxonomy is a system that educators use to have learning objectives to teach writing students. There are three different domains that exist. These domains are cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. These three domains are used to obtain skills and knowledge for writing.
The one domain that I want to focus on, in Bloom’s Taxonomy, is Bloom’s list of verbs. These verbs fall under the cognitive domain, which include knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. By applying these six lists of verbs in the cognitive domain, one can apply knowledge, comprehension, and critical thinking on a particular topic. These skills are critical to a writer when he or she communicates to the audience, hence Bloom’s list of verbs.
The verbs for knowledge are count, define, describe, draw, find, identify, label, list, match, name, quote, recall, recite, sequence, tell, and write. In language and writing, these verbs help the writer communicate by recalling facts, terms, basic concepts, and answers to the audience with specifics pertaining to terminology and facts. Knowledge also deals with said specifics such as conventions, trends, sequences, classifications, categories, criteria, and methodology. And finally, there is with the abstract of writing. This includes principles, generalizations, theories, and structures.
The second topic in Bloom’s verbs is comprehension, which demonstrates the understanding of facts and ideas by organizing, writing descriptively, and stating the main ideas in writing. Bloom’s verbs for these are conclude, demonstrate, discuss, explain, generalize, identify, illustrate, interpret, paraphrase, predict, report, restate, review, summarize, and tell. These verbs are designed to help the writer to illustrate and describe a particular topic or compare two things.
The third topic is of Bloom’s verbs is application. Application helps solve problems in new situations by applying Bloom’s verbs when it comes to knowledge, facts, techniques, and rules in writing. These verbs are apply, change, choose, compute, dramatize, interview, prepare, produce, role-play, select, show, transfer, and use.
The fourth topics in Bloom’s verbs are analysis. Analysis is designed to help writers examine and break information into parts, make inferences, and find evidence to support what writers are communicating about by analyzing elements, relationships between things, and organizing information. This is particularly true for technical communication. Bloom’s verbs for analysis are analyze, characterize, classify, compare, contrast, debate, deduce, diagram, differentiate, discriminate, distinguish, examine, outline, relate, research, and separate.
The fifth topic of Bloom’s verbs is synthesis. Here, these verbs are designed to help writers communicate structure or pattern in their writing. Synthesis also refers to the act of putting parts together to form a whole piece of written communication. Bloom’s verbs for synthesis are composing, construct, create, design, develop, integrate, invent, make, organize, perform, plan, produce, propose, and rewrite.
The sixth and final topic for Bloom’s verbs is for evaluation. In this final topic, writers can present and defend opinions about information, making sure the communication is valid, and that the quality of the written word is based on a set of criteria. Bloom’s verbs are appraised, argue, assess, choose, conclude, critic, decide, evaluate, judge, justify, predict, prioritize, prove, rank, rate, and select.
With these verbs, and six topics of words, writers can carefully structure a well written document. This includes how to write from a knowledgeable stand-point, being able to comprehend and explain an issue, apply facts, examine information, structure information into parts, and finally evaluate and justify the writer’s argument.
Cited sources:
“Bloom’s Taxonomy Verbs.” Bloom’s Taxonomy Verbs. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Apr. 2015.
“Bloom’s Taxonomy.” Wikipedia. Wikipedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 22 Apr. 2015.
Nicholas W. Norris 