ENGL 202 Project 1 Handout FA19 F2F
- 1. English 202 Introduction to Professional Writing Page 1 of 2 Project 1: Analyzing Professional Writing Practices You might think of a specific workplace - like an engineering firm - as a place where people do, well, engineering. But while of course engineering skills are important if one is employed as an engineer, it turns out that writing and communication skills are just as, if not more critical – because the only way anybody can know what’s happening, engineering-wise, is by being able to communicate that through writing. (When people find out I teach writing, they often lament that if they’d known how much of their job was devoted to writing, they would have worked harder in their college writing classes.) Not coincidentally, this is why English majors are so sought after by employers – because they’ve developed the critical thinking and communication skills that are so important to the contemporary workplace. (Hooray for English majors!) In this assignment, you will have three tasks to accomplish: 1. Interview a current professional about how much and how often they write in their job, and what kinds of writing and communication tools they use. 2. Analyze a document that this professional has produced in order to understand the audience, purpose, and investments of this professional context. (Note: the document can be something they worked on as part of a team.) 3. Synthesize what you’ve learned about writing in a particular professional context from doing both of the above tasks. You’ll write up the findings from your interview and document analysis in a common internal workplace communication genre (a memo report). Your report will include two appendices: Appendix 1 will be a transcript or detailed summary of your interview. Appendix 2 will be the document you used as the basis for your analysis of the writing conventions, audience, and communication style of this profession. In class, I’ll explain more about how to do the interview and analysis, how to write a memo report, and how to apply principles of document design to produce professional documents. Project Deliverable: Memo Report, about 1000 words (not including appendices)i. Audience: Your classmates and I will be the audience for your report. Purpose: To present the findings from your interview and analysis. Criteria for Evaluation Content: Presents a clear, informative, well-developed portrait of the typical writing practices of a professional community, as well as the rhetorical dimensions of their work. Formatting: The memo report is divided into appropriate sections, with headings and white space between sections.
- 2. ENGL 202 Intro to Professional Writing Page 2 of 2 Document-level style: Sections have clear introductions, well-developed ideas; paragraphs begin with strong topic sentences. There are clear transitions between paragraphs and ideas. Sentence-level style: Mostly written in active voice; clear, lively prose, using active verbs and few vague pronouns; concise statement of ideas. i Page lengths and word counts in this course are based on 12 pt., single-spaced, left-justified text for paragraphs (no paragraph indent) with a blank line inserted between paragraphs and the use of document design principles such as heading levels and white space. Never write to meet a word count or page length. If, however, you are significantly over or under guidelines for these, let me know.