ENGL 3880: Writing for Business & Industry

Course Units

Course units are summarized below. Additional information about each unit will appear during the semester. To jump to the calendar for each unit, click the "Unit Calendar" button alongside each unit description.
 

Unit One: Business Correspondence

In this unit, you will learn principles for writing effective business correspondence: memoranda, emails, and letters.

Although business correspondence comes in many types, we will focus on five common correspondence types:

• inquiry
• complaint
• refusal
• adjustment
• sales

For each correspondence type, I will present you with a "scenario" to which you should respond with a carefully planned, rhetorically effective, and correctly formatted letter. Follow the formatting conventions covered in class and in the textbook. You may use letterhead or an appropriate non-letterhead format. You are welcome to design an letterhead on your own, to use a letterhead template in MS Word, or to use actual letterhead paper.

Submit the five letters, stapled or clipped together, in one folder or envelope in the order listed above. Also neatly label each letter ("inquiry," "complaint," etc.) in the upper right-hand corner--pencil or pen is fine.

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Unit Two: Informal Report (collaborative)

Much of the activity of organizations (companies, agencies, universities, etc.) takes the form of the production and exchange of reports. Reports are used to request resources, to document achievements, to answer questions, to record milestones, and, perhaps most importantly, to identify and resolve problems.

Reports are often produced in series, forming a "paper trail" as a problem is identified, explored, and eventually fixed. Because reports typically represent the problem-solving efforts of an entire organization (rather than only the individuals within the organization), they commonly involve some kind of collaboration.

In the next two units, you will collaborate with two or three classmates to investigate and then propose practical solutions for a specific problem facing some local organization or group. You will collectively submit two documents for a grade: a "before-the-fact" informal report in which you define the problem and describe your group's intended research strategies, and an "after-the-fact" formal recommendation report in which you propose the best solution to the problem.

What counts as a "problem"?

First, it must involve an organization to which you have some connection--i.e., a student organization; a university office that provides a student service; an ECU major in which at least one group member is enrolled; or a local company where at least one group member works.

Second, it must be something that you can help to improve (if not altogether solve) in several weeks' time, through a reasonable amount of research, creativity, and legwork. Not every problem has a solution (think "world peace"), and some technically "solvable" problems are too complex for us to tackle in such a short time (think "student parking"). Stick to specific, near-at-hand problems that can be tackled efficiently. I'll provide some examples from past semesters, and we will develop a list of possibilities in class.

The Informal Report

The product of Unit Two will be a concise, memo-style report that identifies the problem that your group has chosen to tackle. The purpose of this report is to convince me (your project supervisor) that this problem exists, that it is worth trying to solve, and that your group has the personnel and the plan to succeed.

Each group will submit one report for this assignment; each group member is required to contribute to the writing and editing of the report.

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Unit Three: Recommendation Report (collaborative)

In Unit Two, your group identified a problem, conducted preliminary research to determine its features and scope, and developed a research plan to solve it. The next step is to follow through on your plan. The deliverable product for Unit Three is a formal recommendation report in which your group presents its findings and proposes the best solution to the problem.

A formal recommendation report (or "proposal") is much more than a simple action statement--"do X to solve the problem." It also functions as an institutional record of the major factors in a decisionmaking process, and as a persuasive argument aimed at decisionmakers. In class, we will consider strategies for fulfilling the multiple tasks of a formal recommendation report.

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Unit Four: Job Application Package

One of the first, and most important, professional writing tasks that you are likely to encounter is the preparation of a job (or internship, or graduate school) application package.

Most people obtain jobs through a multi-step process: researching careers, selecting potential positions, and designing application documents to suit each position. In this unit, you will follow this process. First, you will research the types of jobs you are qualified for and the types of employers you would like to work for. Then, you will try to convince specific employers to consider you for a job.

These days, most employers have too many applicants per job to interview each one personally. Employers sort through application documents to decide which applicants to consider further. So your first communication with your future employer is extremely likely to be a written document (actually two pieces: a resume and an application letter). Your task in this first set of documents is not to win the job, but simply to persuade the employer to "continue the conversation" by inviting you to an interview.

This assignment has several goals: to help you to create an effective job application package; to teach strategies for analyzing employment opportunities and adapting your package to fit them; and to teach you some argumentation, style, and layout skills that will also apply to other kinds of writing. As you approach this assignment, remember that resumes and cover letters are not merely informative; they are also persuasive documents.

For this assignment, you will write

• One application letter addressed to an actual prospective employer, based on a real job advertisement. Your letter should highlight aspects of your qualifications that are most relevant to the position and employer you have chosen.
• One resume that supports your application letter. The choices you make about content and layout should emphasize appropriate qualifications for the specific job/employer you have chosen. The resume is not a laundry list of every job, class, and volunteer experience you have survived.
• One memo, addressed to me, that summarizes the chosen job, describes what you know about the employer, and explains how you have adapted your letter and resume for this position. The memo should not simply describe; it should prove to me that you made effective content and design choices based on specific features of the position.

Submit the job application package in a folder or envelope in the following order: memo (addressed to me), then letter (addressed to the employer), then resume.

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Unit Five: Brochure

In the final unit of the semester, you will create a brochure that supports the mission of a campus organization, community organization, or local business. You may elect to design a brochure that communicates information connected in some way to your group's major project, or you may select a different purpose. You may also design a brochure that presents information about your major or discipline to prospective ECU students.

The brochure can be promotional or informational, but in either case it should contribute to the institutional mission of whatever organization it represents. It should also be significantly different from existing brochures. For instance, if your department already produces a promotional brochure (or web site) advertising itself to prospective ECU students, you will need to convince me that yours will be substantially different in content, design, and/or goal.

We will cover several steps of the brochure development and production process: user and content analysis, the development of a design grid, the composition of text and visuals, the creation of a brochure mockup, and final production. Throughout this process, you will need to make informed decisions about appropriate content, style, tone, layout, arrangement, and design. While a polished final production is important, your decision-making process throughout the brochure's development is even more important. A good brochure is one that's well suited to its audience and purpose, whether or not it is printed in 256 colors on glossy card stock. 

Along with the brochure, you will submit a memo that describes the brochure's audience and purpose, identifies its most important features, and explains how these features contribute to the brochure's purpose. In other words, the memo should guide me through the brochure--it should call my attention to the features that you believe are most rhetorically effective. You may also point out less successful features that you would change in a subsequent revision.

Format requirements

• The brochure must include at least one visual aid (chart, graph, table, photograph, drawing, map, etc.) Remember that visual aids are often very effective ways to present a lot of information in small spaces, so you may want to use more than one. Also remember, however, that some visuals are very expensive to volume print. You will need to justify your choices.
• The final copy of the brochure should be printed on a high-resolution color printer (if the document uses color)--it should look professional. Drafts for workshops need not be specially printed.

Hints

• Remember that the brochure must provide contact information and/or a form that the reader can return asking for further information. You can't promote a program if the potential users don't know where to go or whom to contact.
• Make sure that the style of your language is consistent throughout the brochure and that it is appropriate for the intended audience of the brochure.
• If you decide to distribute the brochures by mail, you must either include a self-mailer panel on the brochure or explain in your proposal how you plan to mail the brochure (in company envelopes accompanied by a letter, for example).

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