Business Writing
English 3130 040 CRN 83895 Minimester 1 Fall 2008
Other Assignments:
Assignment: Workplace Writing Analysis
Due: 10/10 (7:30 pm)
Can hand in during finals period on paper or email a Word document attachment
Note: for this project you will be examining writing within your field/career choice. Your field/career choice is the career you are planning to pursue once you have your degree. If you will not be going directly into your field/career of choice after getting this degree (perhaps going off to law school, or to get a master’s), you should still focus on the career goal (lawyer, doctor, whatever) and not the more intermediate stages. If you have questions about this please ask.
Purpose: To analyze and understand how writing functions within your field/career choice.
For this project you will be analyzing one document from your field/career and studying writing within your field. Then you will present your analysis and findings to me in a 2-3 page memo. Do begin the memo with an introduction section providing an overview to the whole memo. Beyond the mandatory introduction and conclusion, this project has two main parts (each should be a page or more in length):
1) Analysis of Workplace Writing:
Drawing on research (internet, books, trade magazines, interviews, observations, and so on) discuss how writing functions within your fields/career choice. Talk about how much writing you will need to do and what types of writing you will need to do. Consider what types of audiences and purposes you will be writing to. Discuss how much of your job will be writing. Also consider genre—what genres will you write? Memos? Reports (what types of reports)? Websites? Blogs? Proposals? Progress reports? Journal articles? Emails? And so on. From the genres you will have to write choose which genre you think will be the most important and present an argument as to why this is a key genre for your field/career choice. Don’t forget that the first part of the book covers some of this information rather generally.
2) Examination of Professional Writing:
For the second part you get to choose one of two options from your field: an example of workplace writing or a professional article. I recommend the example of workplace writing if you plan to work in industry—the business world. I recommend the professional article from your field if you plan on working in academia or in a field where professional journal articles are key (research oriented fields, medicine, law, and so on).
Choice 1: Example of Workplace Writing
Gather and analyze a professionally written document from your field in the genre you chose above as the most important for your field/career choice. With this document investigate and discuss the ways writing functions in your specific writing context, community, and field. You may choose any text from this genre that allows you to examine the type of writing and writing practices that occur in your field. Examples vary across fields:
- Technical reports
- Progress reports
- Project proposals
- Performance or safety evaluations
- Programmer's manuals
- Memoranda
- Textbook excerpts of managerial or organizational strategies
- Others
Begin by providing a brief overview of the document and explain how you found the document. Attach the document as an appendix (and of course refer to it appropriately in your memo). In your analysis of this document particularly focus on these areas:
1. Purpose, Audience & Context: For what purpose or purposes is your document written? Be sure to indicate the context and the primary audience for which this document was written, as well as whom the document is likely to affect.
2. Function & Persuasion: Common uses of business documents include to do, to inform, to learn, to choose, to archive. For what function was your document written? Many business documents are persuasive in some form or another. How is this document persuasive? What techniques did the author(s) use to be persuasive?
3. Organization and Genre: How is the document organized? How can you tell what is important? Less important? How well does the document conform to the genre? If it doesn't conform why do you think this is? Is the organization and genre appropriate for the purpose and audience of the document?
4. Language and Style: What tone is used? What style is used? How formal is the language? What does this tell you about the readers? Does the article use jargon? Technical language? Other specific language issues?
Conclude this section by discussing what this document tells you about writing in your field. What additional information does it tell you that you may not have discovered in part 1 of this assignment?
Choice 2: Professional Article Summary & Critique
Find a current article from a journal* (preferably last 5 years) in your field/career choice that is at least 5 pages (make sure it is a real article, not a book review or update, etc.). Get the article approved by me (by 10/08). Read this article critically and, in at least one page of your memo, discuss this article. Begin your discussion of the article by writing a 250 word informative abstract of the article. Make sure it is in your own words and not the same abstract possibly included with the article. Next, critique the article, discussing:
1. Purpose, Audience & Context: For what purpose or purposes is your document written? Who is the audience? Be sure to indicate the context and the primary audience for which this document was written, as well as whom the document is likely to affect. What is the context?
2. Function & Persuasion: Common uses of journal articles include to do, to inform, to discuss, to study, to learn, to choose, to archive. For what function was your document written? Many journal articles are persuasive in some form or another. How is this document persuasive? What techniques did the author(s) use to be persuasive?
3. Professional Issues: Pay attention to things like conflicts between experts over theories or interpretation of data. Look for ethical dilemmas. Discuss what types of support the article uses and how this support works in your field.
4. Language and Style: What tone is used? What style is used? How formal is the language? What does this tell you about the readers? Does the article use jargon? Technical language? Other specific language issues?
Conclude this section by discussing what this document tells you about writing in your field. What additional information does it tell you that you may not have discovered in part 1 of this assignment?
Conclude the memo (regardless of choice) by discussing how you now see writing within your choose field/career choice. Talk about what things you need to do to prepare yourself for writing in your career and also talk about how you are already prepared. Discuss any surprises that you uncovered during this project. For example, were you surprised by the amounts of writing you must do? Of course, as with any good conclusion, wrap the paper up and provide a summary of what you discussed.
Note: Make sure you cite any paraphrasing or quotes correctly and provide full bibliographic information.
*Make sure this is a journal and not a professional magazine. There are differences in quality and professionalism levels. According to the MLA Handbook edition 4, scholarly or professional journals (same thing) “present learned articles containing original research and original interpretations of data and texts” (138). The article needs to be peer reviewed and include citations. Often the language is more complex than magazines and the articles will probably each have an abstract. I will bring samples to class.
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