There are four major assignments in ENGL 3053 that make up 70% of the student's grade.The instructions for each are here so that you can review them without downloading or opening a Word doc, but the Word docs are attached on the main page.
This assignment requires you to locate two to three pieces of professional writing in your field and analyze the rhetorical choices made by the writers. Your analysis will focus on the writers’ styles, purposes, and conceptions of their audiences. Based on this analysis, you will compose an argument about the core rhetorical strategies employed in each document, and what those strategies tell you about writing in your field or discipline.
Find two or three pieces of professional writing in your field or discipline. Read and annotate the pieces carefully to digest the content, and make some initial observations about the rhetorical choices each author makes. Consider specifically how the writers express their purposes, how they conceive their audiences, and how they address those audiences in order to achieve their purposes:
Now draft an essay analyzing these pieces of writing and explaining how your sources’ rhetorical choices might inform your own development as a writer in your field or profession.
Review chapters 4 and 6 in PSTC, and “Purpose,” “Audience,” and “Context” in HTW to help you elaborate on these rhetorical issues.
Once you’ve drafted your essay, revise carefully for content, and then for clarity, mechanics and style. Use your discipline’s documentation style (e.g. MLA; APA; Chicago) consistently to attribute information and expression of ideas to your sources. Include as the last page of your essay a “Works Cited,” “References,” or “Bibliography” page, according to the conventions of the style. Submit a single Word document or pdf, that includes your references or Works Cited page, to the Blackboard assignment link by the due date.
Minimum page length: 4-5 pages
Due date: [Week 4]
Grade value: 15% or 150 points
For this major assignment, you will prepare two short documents, a memo and a letter, addressing the same topic.
You will imagine a workplace scenario within your chosen field or major. This could be a medical office, a school, an engineering firm, the IT department in a corporation, a public health agency, or any other setting that in your field. You have been been given a task, and must report on it in-house, or within the workplace, via a memo, and to outside stakeholders via a letter. This task could be addressing a problem or complaint, doing some needed research, forming a taskforce or committee. Use your creativity and your knowledge or research into the field to identify this task, which will be your topic. Your audience and purpose will be different for the memo and the letter. Therefore you need to understand the uses of these genres, the expectations and conventions of each, and the required format and content.
See your Handbook for Technical Writing for concise definitions of the genres. You’ll find “memos” in HTW page 331, and “letters” on pages 304-309.
A memo is used for communications within a business or organization, so the writer and the audience either knows each other or knows of the other and has common knowledge and interest in the workplace. The tone may be more or less formal depending on who the writer and audience are. The purpose will be to notify those who need the information of your task, the problem or need or research, and the outcome you have reached. Your memo may require a summary of the problem or need, a presentation of research or information, and a recommendation for solutions. These would be set apart in sections with headings for ease of access for the reader. The need for explanation and detail will be different from that need in a letter to someone outside the organization. Assess that need. You are expected to use appropriate memo format, tone, and content, demonstrate understanding of this rhetorical situation, and effectively write a professional communication.
A letter is the genre used by businesses, professionals, organizations or other entities to communicate with those outside their own workplace. Determine who your task will affect outside of those within your company or organization. Who would you logically need to communicate this information or solution with? Would it be a stakeholder or customer or client? What explanation and details would they need, and how would their understanding and response differ from those you addressed in your memo? Consider your audience and your purpose for this letter—is it to inform, to persuade or motivate, to appease, to sell? Determine how you will adapt the content accordingly for your letter, You are expected to use appropriate business letter format, tone, and content, demonstrate understanding of this rhetorical situation, and effectively write a professional communication.
Once you’ve drafted your memo and letter, revise carefully for content, and then for clarity, mechanics and style, as well as the appropriate format for each genre. Even though you might submit a references page with these communications, for this class you should cite sources and include a References or Works Cited page for any research you used as support for your content. Use your discipline’s documentation style (e.g. MLA; APA; Chicago) to attribute information and expression of ideas to your sources. Include as the last page of your submitted paper a “Works Cited,” “References,” or “Bibliography” page, according to the conventions of the style.
Paste both the memo and the letter, and the reference page, into a single Word document or pdf and submit that single document to the Blackboard assignment link by the due date.
Minimum page length: 2 pages
Due date: [Week 7, 3 weeks in this unit]
Grade value: 15% or 150 points
A proposal is an offer to carry out research, to deliver goods, or to provide services. A successful proposal clearly identifies some problem and advances a solution. The readers are usually in a position of authority—supervisors, managers, elected officials, etc.—to endorse or reject the writer's plan. To be successful, every proposal you write must exhibit a “can do” attitude, putting the reader and his or her company's needs at the center of your work. The tone of your proposal should be persuasive, saying to the reader: “Here is what I can do for you.” This assignment is collaborative, completed and graded as a group assignment. You will write an external unsolicited proposal. Please refer to Chapter 11 of PSTC, pp. 296-316 and HTW pp 409-426 for a detailed look at proposals and examples of proposal content, organization and formatting.
A proposal is an argument (a plan) you must convince your reader to accept. You cannot write a successful proposal until you:
Each of these steps requires research of the problem, your audience’s needs and viewpoint, possible solutions, and the time, costs and materials required. When you run into something you need to include but you don’t know, research it.
This is a collaborative assignment, as many proposals in the workplace are. As a group, you will write an unsolicited external proposal in which you will propose a solution to a complex problem. You should try to choose a topic related to your field of study. If you are unable to identify some problem from within your future field or your major discipline, you could alternatively propose a solution to some problem in your current work or living environment.
Unlike a solicited proposal, in which the company to which you are submitting the proposal knows about the problem, your unsolicited proposal has to convince readers that (1) there is a problem and (2) you are the one to solve it. An external proposal is sent to a decision maker outside your company or organization. External proposals tend to be more formal than internal ones, and they should be formatted in the form of a proper business letter. (Internal proposals are most often formatted as memos.) After you have selected your topic, you might want to use the following guidelines to write your proposal:
A proposal should have:
See your Practical Strategies for Technical Communications pp. 299-314 for explanation of these components, and appropriate design and formatting.
You will be completing this project as a group, so you can divide up the work in whatever way is logical in light of your group members’ resources, interests and abilities, but it should be equitable. Each member will sign a contract. A weekly accounting of each member’s contribution will be required, and the group has authority to dismiss a member who is not contributing. Upon dismissal, that member will be responsible for completing the entire project on his own, and will lose one letter grade for lack of collaboration. This independent completion is not a voluntary option. One objective of this assignment is to learn to collaborate and produce work as part of a group. Your proposal should be 5-8 pages long (not counting cover page), and should be formatted as a full-block business letter, single spaced.
You need to use at least 3 sources for your research of the problem, and include these in your references section.
Minimum page length: 5-8 pages
Due date: [Week 11]
Grade value: 20% or 200 points
Compose a recommendation report either based on the accumulated data from the Assignment 3 Proposal, and from my feedback on that paper, or on a new problem you’ve identified in your field. This is an individual assignment, so although you will work with a group on some of the process, the paper will be written, submitted and graded as an individual project.
You will identify a problem or issue, then conduct a study and generate a report that offers your recommendation for addressing the stated problem, the pros and cons of alternatives, and why you recommend your solution. You should incorporate a minimum of 5 sources: three secondary sources and two primary sources. Any necessary documents should be included in the report as appendixes (interviews, surveys, case studies, lab reports, etc.). Make sure that you have thoroughly read and understand PSTC Ch. 13 “Writing Recommendation Reports” and HTW pp 183-205 “Formal Reports” to ensure familiarity with formatting, essential elements, and proper writing methods. A basic model for the professional technical report is given to you in PSTC on pp. 357-380.
Note: Although Ch. 13 provides the bulk of the information for this paper, you should review previous chapters and independently research formats most appropriate for your chosen discipline.
The report should begin with the following elements:
The main portion of your reports should contain the following components:
The final portion of your report will include the following:
Minimum page length: 7-10 pages
Due date: [Week 15 or on the final exam date] to the assignment link on Blackboard.
Grade value: 20% or 200 points