Week 1: January 7-11

First Meeting:

Introduction to the Course

• Review syllabus and course calendar
• Discuss course technologies
• Introduce Student Information Sheet (attached at bottom of this page). The completed sheet is due as a PDF email attachment by the beginning of class on January 11th.

For Next Meeting:

• Make certain that you have your login and password for accessing PUCC machines and an email address that accomodates attachments. For questions about your account, visit the ITAP Customer Service Center in STEW 068. You can also visit their webpage at http://www.itap.purdue.edu/tlt/help/ for information about campus technologies.
• Purchase Professional Writing Online at the book's website or at Follett's or University Bookstore. It is generally cheapest to buy it online.
• In PW Online, read the following:
  • Rhetoric of Professional Writing:
    • Understanding Purpose
    • The Complex Nature of Writing
    • Evaluating Writing
    • Technology and Writing/Work in the 21st Century
    • Collaboration and Team Writing
    • Types of Documents (Genres)
    • Terminology: What Is Professional Writing?
    • The Importance of Technical Communication to Engineers
  • After you complete these readings, write a 300-word typed response to the question: "What is professional writing?" This will be due at the beginning of class next time.
• Also read the following in PW Online, read the following in the "Documents: Memos and Email" section:
  • The Rhetoric of the Memo and E-Mail
  • Memo Template
  • Samples

Second Meeting:

• Discussion of professional writing
• Interview assignment given (due January 18th):
  • Find a professional who is doing what you want to be doing as a career. By telephone, email, or in person, interview this person. Ask at least these six questions:
    • What percentage of your time do you spend writing? This includes planning, organizing, drafting, and editing.
    • What kinds of writing do you do? Letters? Emails? Reports? Proposals? Descriptions? Memos? Other?
    • Who reads the writing? Who evaluates it?
    • How important are writing skills in this profession?
    • What kinds of collaboration do you use in your writing? (ie writing with a group or team)
    • How often do you write collaboratively with others as opposed to writing on your own?

For Next Meeting:

Read the following in the "Principles: Understanding Readers" chapter

• Overview
• What Readers Read
• How Readers Read
• Classifying Readers
• Understanding an Audience

After you complete the reading, write a 300-word response to the following: "How does understanding your audience change the way you approach writing a document? What changes will you make to accomodate different audiences?" This response is due at the beginning of the next class meeting.

• Begin work on the Interview Assignment (due January 18)
  

Third Meeting:

• Audience Evaluation
• Assign groups for grammar and style presentations
  • Group 1: Make negatives positive, clear out clutter words, delete needless qualifiers, commonly confused words
  • Group 2:Semi-colon, colon, comma
  • Group 3: Non-sexist language, cultural context
  • Group 4:Apostrophes, quotation marks, ellipses
  • Group 5:Italics, parentheses, capitalization, brackets, dashes

For Next Meeting:

• From PW Online, read the following sections:
  • Projects: Employment Project Context
  • The Rhetoric of Employment Documents
  • Documents: Letters
    • The Rhetoric of the Letter
    • Letter Template

      
      

    • Types of Employment Documents
      • Resumes
      • Application Letter
      • Web Resume

• To prepare for discussion of resumes, complete the OWL tutorials: Resume Workshop
• Resources:
  • The Riley Guide