Business professionals, scientists, medical professionals, engineers, attorneys and other professionals who can communicate well, gain credibility and are more effective in the workplace. Central to effective communication is the ability to analyze and respond to the "rhetorical situation," the competing demands of author, audience, and context, and so the key goal of the course is to help students develop the ability to respond effectively to these questions:
- What do I want/need to accomplish with this document?
- Why do my readers want/need this document?
- How do I produce a document that helps my audience accomplish what they need to accomplish?
To create a document that your audience can use, you need to know something about them: who they are, what they expect to see in your document, what they already know (or don’t know) about the topic, what they want to use your document to do, and the conditions under which they will use it. Our goal in this course will be to develop approaches to planning and writing documents, in addition to strategies for creating them.
What's New
Individual Conference Schedule for Week 8-
Individual Conferences for Week 9
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Modified Schedule for Weeks 7 through Finals
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Essays on "Why I Write"
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Essay Topic on Social Media
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Essay Topic on Writing in the Disciplines (final project)
- PowerPoint Presentations on Visual Design (supplement to Anderson's chapters 13-14)