English 420, Business Writing

Monday

• Introduction to Cover Letters
• Cover Letter Activity

Before Wednesday:

• Draft narrative in response to two cover letter questions addressed on pg. 224 in The Thomson Handbook
• Prepare outline of cover letter (Remember to use your Job Skills Chart to locate experiences with which to "show" rather than "tell" about your skills)
• Continue work on draft copy of resume

Wednesday

• Completing the Cover Letter - Translating your narrative for the cover letter
• Peer work on cover letter translation

Before Friday:

• Continue work on draft copy of resume
• Begin work on draft copy of cover letter

Friday

• No Class: Open conference period during the regularly scheduled class period

For Monday:

1. Reading Response Week 4 - For this week's reading response you need to do the following:
• By Noon on Saturday, February 2, please post a draft copy of your cover letter to the class website. To do this, you will upload a Word (.doc) version of your cover letter to the class website in a blog entry. Please make sure the Word version of your cover letter is not Word 2007. To upload the file, you will first go to "Create Content" and you will create a blog entry. On the blog entry page, you will need to scroll to the bottom of the page where it says "File attachments." Click the "File attachments" link and upload the file--it is similar to uploading an attachment to an email. After uploading the file, make sure the box under the heading "List" is checked, and then you will submit the blog entry--like you do on any other blog entry. After submitting the entry, check to see if your cover letter document is attached at the bottom of your post.
• By Midnight on Sunday, February 3, you need to provide peer feedback for two of your classmates' cover letters. In order to ensure that each student receives two peer feedback responses, you may not provide feedback for someone else's cover letter if s/he already has received two responses. As a way to make sure that students are not commenting on someone else's post at the same time (and thus doubling up) you need to do the following:
• Once you locate a cover letter to review, you IMMEDIATELY need to click the "Add Comment" link in that person's blog entry. Once you have done this, enter the subject heading - "YOUR LAST NAME - CL Feedback" - and then write "Feedback Forthcoming" in the text box. Then submit this comment to the class website. The purpose of adding the "Add Comment" before providing feedback is to reserve the cover letter and notify your classmates that you are providing feedback for that student. Accordingly, if you already see two comments to a peer's blog entry that contains her/his cover letter, move on and locate another cover letter to review.
• After reserving the cover letters to review, you will then provide feedback using "Track Changes" in Word, which I introduced in class on Wednesday. To use "Track Changes" you first need to download and save both of your peers' cover letters to your own computer desktop. Using Word, you will open both documents from your desktop and provide the feedback using "Track Changes." To turn on "Track Changes," you will need to go to the Tools tab in Word and find the "Track Changes" heading.
• After providing sufficient feedback for a cover letter, you need to upload the file in the "Add Comment" post you previously posted to reserve the cover letter. To do this, you will open the comment you posted and then click the "Edit" link within the comment entry. Following the same procedure you used to upload your own cover letter before noon on Saturday, you will upload the reviewed cover letter (with comments) from your desktop. After uploading the file, you will need to edit the message in the text box from "Feedback Forthcoming" to whatever type of message you deem is necessary. After editing the message, you will then submit the comment as a blog entry.
• When providing feedback for your peers' cover letters, you will need to keep in mind what you read this week in class as well as what we discussed in our workshop on Wednesday. Remember to focus on the heading, introduction paragraph, body paragraph(s), conclusion paragraph, and signature line and keep in mind what a writer's goals are in drafting each of these sections. When grading this week's reading responses, I will assess the quality of your feedback. Put another way, I will be looking at the relevance and clarity of your responses as well as the amount of feedback you provide. (A note on amount or quantity--I do not want you to force providing feedback if it is unnecessary; however, I want you to make sure you are putting in enough effort on each review. This reading response is designed for the class to work together and assist each other in your work, so please ensure your contribution is meaningful for your classmates).
• REMINDER: In order for you to see the feedback your peers provided for your own work, you need to make sure "Track Changes" is turned on in your Word program
• As a way to verify that you completed the required work for this week's reading response, check to see if you did the following:
• Posted your own cover letter as a blog entry by Noon on Saturday, February 2.
• Posted an "Add Comment" to the blog entries containing the cover letters you peer reviewed as well as uploaded the reviewed cover letter to each "Add Comment" by Midnight on Sunday, February 3.
2. Before class on Monday, post a draft copy of your resume as a Word (.doc) document to the class website for the resume workshop. Please make sure the Word version of your resume is not Word 2007. Also, bring 2 printed copies of your resume for the peer review workshop