Professional Writing

1. Your first writing assignment will be to rewrite a set of instructions.

The scenario for this assignment is described below.

You have just taken a position as a student worker for the Communications Arts Department at Anderson College. You began your job last week. Anderson College has an enrollment of 10,000 students. Among this student population, 20% of the students are international students for whom English is not a native language, 10% of the students are dual-enrollment high school students, 20% of the students are graduate students, and the remaining 50% of the student population consists of a mixture of adult learners and traditional students. Anderson adopted LEO as its learning management system two years ago. Anderson uses LEO for both its online classes and its hybrid classes.Since moving to LEO, Dr. Richard Johnson, Dean of the Undergraduate School at Anderson, and Dr. Lynn Peterson, Dean of the Graduate School at Anderson, have noticed that both students

taking classes at Anderson and instructors teaching at Anderson

are often not aware of the different settings one can choose to view discussions in LEO. This lack of awareness has caused confusion and frustration as students and faculty members have attempted to navigate through the discussions in their classes.Dr. Johnson and Dr. Peterson tried to address this problem two months ago. At that time,

they asked the previous student worker to write instructions on how to change the settings for discussions in LEO for the optimal viewing arrangement. The previous student worker wrote some instructions. However, the worker wrote them very unprofessionally and poorly. They cannot be distributed to students in their current form.

Moreover, shortly after the student worker finished the instructions, he left his position for another job. As a result, Anderson College now has a set of poorly designed instructions that it cannot send out to students and faculty members. Mean while, students and faculty members are still experiencing frustration with the system, and they

need a document that guides them through how to adjust their settings in LEO for viewing discussions.

Dr. Johnson, who is your immediate supervisor, has now asked you, the new student worker, to rewrite the instructions that the previous student worker wrote. He has asked you to use the same graphics the previous student worker used. He has also suggested that you use arrows to point to sections of the graphics if such arrows can help in understanding specific steps in the instructions.Keep in mind that potentially 10,000 students will be using the instructions, in addition to

various faculty members. The instructions should be clear,professional, and well designed.Moreover, you will want to consider the different types of students at Anderson College,

including their backgrounds and their varying demographics.Dr. Johnson has given you the following resources to help you in this project:

Instructions: Tell Them How to Do It! by David McMurrey

Instructions: How to Write Guides for Busy, Grouchy People

Wikibooks’ Professional and Technical Writing/Instructions

Dean Johnson has informed you that your introduction should be very short—no more than one paragraph of about 4-5 sentences. ___________________________Strategies to Consider for this Assignment:

Consider your audience. Your primary audience is the students and faculty members at Anderson College. However, Dean Johnson will be reviewing your document as well. Most likely, department heads will be viewing it also.Therefore, the dean and the department heads can be considered secondary audiences.Length of your instructions

:There is no minimum or maximum number of words for this document. You will want to follow the advice given in the three resources that Dean Johnson provided for you as you design the new set of instruction.

2. Write an email message to your supervisor, Dr. Richard Johnson, updating him on the revised instructions. The Scenario for This Assignment .You have just rewritten the instructions on how to change the settings for discussions in LEO. If you recall from writing assignment #1, you were assigned this task by your supervisor, Dr.Richard Johnson, Dean of the Undergraduate School at Anderson College. You are now going to send an email message to Dr. Johnson . The email message will accomplish the following:Inform him that you have completed the revision and that you are attaching the revised draft to the email message.

List and explain the changes you have made

Select at least three major changes you have made. You don’t want to list for him each and every adjustment you made to the document.

You might consider grouping changes. For example, if you made one graphic larger and another graphic smaller, you might group this into one change—adjustment in the size of the graphics Explain why you made these changes

. End the email message in a cordial manner, asking for any feedback he has on your draft.Strategies to Consider for this Assignment:

Consider your audience. Your primary audience is Dr. Johnson. Remember that his colleague, Dr. Lynn Peterson, who is Dean of the Graduate School at Anderson, was working with him on this project and is very interested in the document you produce. Therefore,

Dr. Peterson can be considered secondary audiences. our message should be 250-400words in length. Dr. Johnson is a busy administrator, and he will not want to read a long email message with a huge amount of text. You want to communicate to him the information in a concise, clear manner.Paragraphs should be short and readable. In addition, you will want to consider using headings to help make the email message readable and easy to navigate. Moreover, you could consider using bullet points to list any items you want to highlight. Overall, you want to “chunk” your information so that Dr. Johnson can read the email message quickly and understand your points.

3.In this assignment, you will conduct research on your field of study in order to become more aware of the professional contacts, organizations, employment opportunities, and trends in the field.

Complete a report on your findings. Your report will feature the following headings:

Professional Organization

Description of Conference

Personal Applications

Length of your paper:

Your report should be 800-1200 words

4. Your last writing assignment will be a cover letter and resume.

In this assignment, you will locate a job posting in your field, write a cover letter to apply for the position, and write a resume for the position.

5. Professor Vasquez is writing about teaching writing skills in Spanish to students for whom Spanish is not a native language. However, that issue is not the focus of our discussion here. His analysis of business writing and academic writing is the focus of this discussion. That analysis will be very helpful to review as we begin our course.

Please answer all of the following questions based on what Vasquez writes in his article, not based on your own understanding. In addition, please do not simply copy text from the article. Please summarize what Vasquez writes in the article, and use quotation marks for occasional quotes from the article if you would like to.

• What are some of the problems that poor writing causes for businesses? Please do not copy your answer from the article. Please summarize what the article says on this issue and use quotation marks for occasional quotes from the article.
• What are the similiarities between academic writing and business writing? Try to come up with at least three of them. Please write a paragraph or two in posting your answer.
• What are the differences between academic writing and business writing? Try to come up with at least three of them. Please write a paragraph or two in posting your answer.

6. For this discussion topic, you will want to read the instructions for Writing Assignment #1, "Rewriting a Set of Instructions." The assignment instructions provide some context for this discussion topic task.

The poorly written set of instructions that you examined in week 1 were written by a student worker at Anderson College.

Imagine that you are Dr. Richard Johnson, Dean of the Undergraduate School at Anderson College. You will write an email message to the student worker informing her that her instructions are not suitable to be distributed to the students and faculty at Anderson College.

Keep in mind the Jameson article we read in week 1 as well as other resources you are reading for week 2. You want to maintain proper tone and professionalism. While the instructions the student worker wrote are not professional and would be embarrassing to send to the students and faculty members, you do not want to unprofessional in your message to the student worker. In addition, she is a student worker. You don't want to overly criticize her in your message.

Write the body of your email message below. You don't have to worry about the subject line of any other part of the email message for this task.

You can make up the name of the student worker in writing the email message.

7 . Consider a time when you received or engaged in communication with an employer. This might have been a letter, an email, or even a text from an employer. It might have been a conversation between you and your employer.

What did your employer do in this communication that made you receptive or unreceptive to the message from the employer?

Your answer should be 1-2 paragraphs.

Note : Avoid Plagraism and Use APA format 6^th Edition with Reference Pages