ENGL 420: Business Writing

This week we were able to present to the class and to the client both on Wednesday. This was very beneficial because we were very polished for our client presentation. I think think the class liked our presentation as well as our project. I found it very interesting how each of us did different projects. We were very excited to get a 50/50 on our presentation and I feel like it was well deserved. We really did work hard on this project so I'm glad we did well. Our presentation with Mandy went very well. It was almost the exact same presentation.

I found the 'Informal Oral Presentations" pretty informative. I know that audience analysis was really important to our project. Actually it was the purpose behind our project. Since we were just trying to make sure that we were hitting to key businesses and donors and to make the donor letters more specific. That is why we each researched a different business and tailored our letters to each of their specific interests and objectives.Our project cannot really be exhibited spatially because it is a letter. We will present the letter to BVN and that will be the main presenation type.

In response to the reading on gender, being sexist and talking about people with disabilities I find myself kind of stuck. I feel it is important to treat people as equals regardless of race, ethnicity or gender. However, if a person is a man in business I think he should be called a businessman, if there is a woman in business I think she should be called a businesswoman. I know that there is this huge issue over political correctness and I really wish people would just cut the crap and say how it really is.

I actually felt that the Luntz article was particularly helpful. Obviously, every student wants to hear, "Write as simply as possible" but that never seems to be what we're taught. I feel like using the simplest language to relate to everyone is the best way to go about public speaking but if you do that then people may think that you aren't anymore intelligent then just those simple words you use. Often times, too, I hear people us larger words commpletely wrong. I even have a professor who says psuedo and I think he means semi.

I don’t think our group will have any problem whatsoever creating a selling point for The Candy Bar. As far as persuasive nature goes, I don’t think it will take too much. When Jessie first said let’s do the Candy Bar the rest of us were like where is it?

We easily came up with three very possible choices for this project. The one that we have temporarily chosen and you appoved is The Candy Bar. Our group is trying to find a time to go and talk to the owners about things we could help them with. Our initial ideas are to either make brochures or fliers to increase the knowledge of The Candy Bar around Purdue's campus. We believe The Candy Bar is a great choice for this project because it fits all of the criteria and we believe we could actually help their business through our work on this project.

I enjoyed a week of presentations. It was nice to see all of our hard work put to use. I don't know about the other groups but I hope they took the project as seriously as my group and I did. I feel like we accomplished an awful lot for the short amount of time we had. I thought it was interesting to see how all of the presentations came together after reading them time and time again. There was one presentation that I felt had more like three steps to one solution instead of three actual solutions.

So there weren't any readings this week other than the white papers we all read and revised. I was pleased with different papers. All of our papers ended up being very different not only in topic but also in format and design. Some I thought were better than others but ultimately I think we have all done a pretty good job.

I am so glad we have finally completed this paper. After all this work I feel like the presentation will be the easiest part. I am really glad that we were able to get Wednesday. I have been so pleased with my group and the work that we have all put forward. It made this project much easier than it seemed it would be because we all worked together. I hope that we are all able to present a convincing case to the class when we present it.

This week the only reading I really liked was the power point. No matter what class I am in and whether it’s the student presentation or a teacher I see a lot of the problems that were in that power point. Very often do I see the most random colors and themes that have nothing to do with and distract from the presentation. I think people are often times more interested in making an eye-catching presentation which is good until the audience isn’t paying attention to the speaker. I also hate when people make an entire powepoint and then read it to me.