ENGL 420: Business Writing

This week we discussed how to present our final products to our audience, along with the specific materials. The power point presentations focused on flyers and brochures. My group is writing fund raising letters, because this is the need for our client. When presenting our project to our client we will probably go from least detailed to most detail as we introduce each letter and keep it informal. The letters are detailed and specifically written to the four companies we chose.

This week we presented our rough drafts to our client to ensure that everything was included that she requested. We settled on the background of our fund raising letter, which will be a washed out picture of the Purdue clock tower. We have chosen to remove the exclamation point from the Boiler Blast symbol, because this will help it to appear more professional. We are in the process of deciding to include the Boiler Blast star on the letter, because it may or may not clash with the overall design.

This week during class we were asked to read articles about Ethics, Plagiarism, and Stereotypes in the work place. I personally feel that most plagiarism is due to laziness. Students copy and paste directly to their papers, and for some odd reason do not think they will get caught. However, there is also a sense of becoming overwhelmed and stressed out by piling assignments even if the student is staying on top of her assignments.

This week in class, we discussed and read examples of proposals, learned about Gantt Charts, and focused on ethical issues that must be addressed when writing a paper. A proposal is a document to bid for a project. An author is trying to convince the reader that he can offer a service that would be beneficial to him or her. There are no set guidelines on how to write a proposal because every aspect is circumstantial. Audience, what is being sold, and the status of the writer will determine the formality and language used to sell the project.

Two clients that I feel would be a good source for our project are Boiler Blast, and The Candy Bar. The Candy Bar is a small business owned by one woman in Chauncey Hill Mall. She does not have a marketing department, and as of right now it appears that she is only known by word of mouth. The Boiler Blast is a volunteer group on campus that holds special events to help out the community. Both of these groups meet the specific criteria requested by the instructor. The actual plan of action will be to make a website, a promotional event, or another need that the client might request.

This week in English 420, the students were only assigned two reading assignments. The first was the third project description and the second was the client criteria guidelines. My group is not allowed to work with clients that are family members, close friends, or a place of work that one of the members is already employed at. It is important that the clients do not have a large marketing department already in place. This narrows it down to non-profit organizations, clubs, and small businesses.

We recently created our rough draft of our white paper and presented in class on Friday. We received alot of constructive comments to help us make it better. We now have to work on making everything cohesive, and not sound like it was written by four different people.

This week in class we finished reading the booklet on group collaboration. It is important to follow the rules and keep everyone one the same page. It is crucial that all team members feel equally involved in the project. It is important to voice lots of ideas to see all sides of project. This also creates a some what uniform vision. It is also important to split the work load amongst the team members to be efficient, and to make the poject less over bearing. There is a challenge to sharing the same vision for the project.

Our team has met and created a detailed outline for our project. I looked up information on the problem, and the other three group members researched one solution each. This allowed us to be detailed and not get burnt out on finding information. We have met once a week in the evening, hold discussions after class, and interact via email and Google Docs. We feel that we are going to be able to write our White Paper from the detailed outline and that will also allow us to have uniform paper written by four people. We also assigned jobs for our team and created a contract that we all agree on.

This week in class we discussed the idea of group collaboration. There is a certain set of guidelines to follow to make sure that the group functions and is productive. UC Davis has created a booklet of Dos and Don’ts for making a group work well together. Some suggestions for a productive, functional group is to be considerate. Another idea they offer is to support the ideas of other people vocally. Nothing is worse than speaking in a group discussion and not have any responses. The group members should be aware of other’s feelings.