Unit 1: Professional Correspondence
Weve been reading about rhetorical strategies like audience awareness, genre awareness, and writing process, along with different ways of persuading people. While we often think of these strategies as useful in things like ads or pitches (which well work on later in this course), these tools also help us in more everyday communicationsespecially in professional writing.
Thus, in this project, well be responding to a series of professional correspondence situationscomposing a memo, a professional email, a letter, and a company statement. Youll need to think about audience and purpose for each specific situation. Alongside each final product, youll need to provide a rationale that describes the decisions you made and how you used tools from the class.
At the end, youll also write a self-evaluation of the project overall. Talk about your writing process, the different steps you took, and what you learned about yourself as a writer. How did your process and product compare to your proposal? Your final grade will be based on a combination of your self-evaluations and rationales description of your process and use of course concepts, and the final product (the finished correspondence).
Task 1: Memo
Situation: You are working on a team (InnoTech) to complete a large project that is taking longer than normal. Your team needs to communicate to the project supervisor, Ms. Hallie Jacobson, your current progress, the remaining steps of the project, and why the project is taking more time than originally anticipated.
Your goal: Write a memo that informs Ms. Jacobson of the current progress, remaining steps, and unanticipated challenges that have delayed progress on the project. You should persuade Ms. Jacobson that the delays will not significantly impede future progress and that they were unavoidable. You should provide additional contextual information (specific names, dates, project description, etc.) as needed.
Task 2: Email
Situation: You are a new employee at a large company. You receive an email from a fellow associate who has worked at the company for several years asking you to adjust a spreadsheet you sent along last week. From your perspective, it appears that this associate is asking you to make changes to the spreadsheet that misrepresent the current data set. You are concerned that these changes would not only be misleading, but make you an accomplice in the associates manipulation of the data set. However, you recognize you may be misunderstanding the associates request and dont want to accuse him of malfeasance. You should provide additional contextual information (specific names, dates, project description, etc.) as needed.
Your goal: Respond to your fellow associate in a professional and ethical manner. Remember that your email correspondence may be read by your supervisors and/or the Human Resources department.
Task 3: Letter
Situation: You are the CEO of a small start-up business that has just had their first profitable year. You are eager to expand your professional network in the coming year in order to grow your business and ensure future success. At a recent conference, you connected with another small start-up in your local area that specializes in similar services. Youd like to reach out to establish a friendly working relationship in the hopes of referring clients to each other based on availability and specific expertise. Your goal: Write a friendly, professional letter to the small start-up business making an offer to establish a reciprocal referral system for clients. Youll want to avoid assuming they are as interested as you are, while still maintaining a positive tone. You should provide additional contextual information (specific names, dates, project description, etc.) as needed.
Task 4: Rationales
For each of your professional correspondences (memo, email, and letter), write a rationale for the choices you made as you planned, drafted, and revised. Your rationale can be formatted any way youd like, but should include specific description of choices you made (i.e., I decided to persuade my audience by choosing to outline my reasoning for extending the project deadline) and why you made those choices (i.e., I think this will help my audience understand my perspective without ignoring their viewpoints). Each rationale should be at least 250 words.
Task 5: Reflection
For your final task, reflect on the hard work youve done during this project. Write a letter to me explaining what you did well during this project, what you wish you would have done differently, and what you think you could improve. Your reflection should be at least 500 words.
Project Checklist
Three finalized correspondences (memo, email, and letter) formatted according to the class templates (see Canvas)
Each correspondence responds to the situation described
