Basic information: UC davis, senior student, transfer student, female, international student, form China, Economic major, full time student, no par time work, total take 4 classes in this quarter: 3 major classes, I business writing class.
Writing skills:
Drawback: international student, English is not my first language, not good at grammar and sentence structure and tense
Advantage: good at summary and analyze information
Time: my class from 8am to 6pm, so I just have time in evening and weekends. I like study together face to face, I like study in the night, I live in Davis, near school, we can study together in school library,
What partner I want: good at grammar, have time at night and weekend, live in Davis, like communicate with face to face, understand my opinion
Objectives
Business professionals must present themselves to a variety of audiences – managers, colleagues, clients, and other stakeholders. Often these introductions occur through the writing one does. To practice presenting yourself through writing, you will create a letter of introduction.
One of your first tasks for your Project 2 Genre Report will be to choose one partner with whom to work. Writing this letter of introduction will give your student colleagues a chance to understand your strengths and weaknesses, your interests, and your possible contributions to the project. This assignment will also give you an opportunity to practice writing rhetorically-effective formal business correspondence.
Assignment
Write a formal business letter that introduces yourself to your student colleagues and explains your interests and possible contributions for the Project 2 Genre Report.
CONTENT OF LETTER
Your letter should provide a discussion of the following as it relates to the project. In other words, you do not have to discuss every minor topic, the topics in parentheses, but you should cover the main five. All that you do include should be discussed in a way that shows relevance to Project 2.
The following topics do not have to be presented in any particular order or structure. For instance, you may choose to discuss each of these in separate paragraphs of your letter, or you may choose to combine some into the same paragraph by showing a relationship between them.
- Your educational background (schools, class-level, classes taken, major, extra-curricular experiences, etc.)
- Your career aspirations post college (where you want to work, types of positions you’re interested in, reasons for your choices, etc.)
- Your writing background and experiences (previous college writing classes, large projects you’ve completed, your feelings about writing, your strengths and weaknesses as a writer, your expectations for what you will learn from this class and/or the project, etc.)
- Your working style (when, where, and how you like to work; your experiences and feelings about writing in a team, the strengths you can bring to a group project: organization, detail-oriented, technologically savvy, good with design, etc.)
- The type of partners you are hoping to work with and why
GENRE OF LETTER
Your letter should follow the conventions of business correspondence from Ch. 5.9 including, but not limited to, the below:
- a direct pattern of organization
- a goodwill and “you” viewpoint
- clear and emphasized main ideas
- a full-block style format
- date
- heading
- inside address
- subject line
- salutation
- body
- complimentary closing
- signature block
Audience & Purpose
Your audience for this letter is all of your colleagues in this section of the class. Be sure to think about what will be relevant and appeal to the values of this audience. Though they are your classmates, you should also think of them as business colleagues and present yourself accordingly. A casual tone is OK, but you should still maintain an appropriate level of professionalism for a business colleague.
Your purpose is to introduce yourself and to present yourself as a professional with whom your colleagues will want to work. As always, I am an evaluating audience, which means I am testing your comprehension and application of class lessons.
Additional Requirements
FILENAME: Name your Google document file as “Project 2a: Last Name, First Name.”
POST TO DISCUSSION: In addition to submitting your letter to your class Google Drive folder, you will post your letter on Canvas under the designated discussion board by the due date on the calendar. Do not post as an attachment or link.
LENGTH: Your final letter should be approximately between 700-1000 words. Longer letters are not necessarily better. Think about the information that your audience needs to identify possible partners for the project.
TECHNOLOGY: Follow all requirements under the Google Drive instructions. If you cut and paste from Google documents to Canvas, you may need to adjust your formatting. You will be responsible for the formatting in Canvas, so check it carefully. If you have trouble, try clearing all formatting and reformatting from within Canvas.
FORMING PARTNERSHIPS: After reading your colleagues’ letters, you should contact people with whom you might be interested in working via their UC Davis email address (you can use the Canvas email tool). You will be responsible for forming your own partnerships. All groups must be formed by the due date on the calendar.
Graded Draft (100 pts)
You will submit a project that meets all requirements listed above by the due date and time listed on the calendar. Any draft not meeting all requirements will lose points.
The points for the project will be based on meeting the requirements and the quality of your work according to the standards discussed in class and the below Grading Rubric.
SUBMISSION: If you do not post to both the Canvas forum and your Google Drive class folder by the due date and time on the course calendar, your assignment will be considered late, and you will lose points
REQUIREMENTS: You must submit a complete project that meets all requirements listed on these assignment instructions.
POSSIBLE DEDUCTIONS: If you do not put your assignment in your class shared Google Drive folder by the due date and time, but Google Drive shows it was completed on time, you will earn a deduction in points: 5% of Graded Draft points (100 points x 5% = 5 points).
If your assignment is submitted in a form other than a Google Drive document (e.g. a Word document, pdf, etc.), you will earn a deduction in points: 5% of Graded Draft points (100 points x 5% = 5 points).
Grading Rubric
A=Excellent, noteworthy work: the writer does most of the below throughout all of the text
B=Strong work: the writer does the most of the below consistently throughout many parts of the text
C=Adequate, passing work: the writer does some of the below in some parts of the text
D/F=Inadequate work: the writer fails to do most of the below in most of the text
A student writer will demonstrate the ability to do the following in the text:
1. ADDRESSING THE ASSIGNMENT
a. follow all directions,
b. show careful studying and following of the advice given in the assigned reading,
c. understand and apply knowledge of all rhetorical situation components
d. understand and apply knowledge of specific rhetorical choices
2. RHETORICAL AWARENESS
a. show awareness of the professional context for the document,
b. give appropriate attention to audience’s needs and values,
c. achieve primary purposes: 1) introducing writer, 2) presenting writer in a positive way, and 2) soliciting a project partner,
d. create a positive and professional persona appropriate for the context.
3. FOCUS & SUPPORT
a. focus on information relevant to the rhetorical purpose,
b. discuss ideas that are explicitly made relevant for the audience and purpose,
c. use specific and convincing evidence appropriate for the rhetorical situation
4. ORGANIZATION & CONNECTIONS
a. make clear connections between all paragraphs, claims, and evidence,
b. organize with a direct pattern,
c. emphasize importance of ideas through placement,
d. order ideas logically and deliberately,
e. write paragraphs of an effective length for the genre and rhetorical situation,
f. organize paragraphs with topic sentences that make clear the main idea(s),
g. show careful attention to audience and purpose in the introduction and conclusion.
5. GENRE & FORMAT
a. follow formal business correspondence formatting as outlined in the assigned reading
b. follow formal business content as outlined in the assigned reading
c. make effective formatting choices (bold underline, lists, headings, etc.) that follow business writing conventions
6. USE OF SOURCES
Not applicable – citation is not required for this assignment.
7. STYLE & LANGUAGE
a. show careful editing and consistent control of Standard Written English (SWE),
b. maintain an informal or formal style as appropriate for the rhetorical situation,
c. use a “goodwill” and “you” viewpoint,
d. achieve clarity and emphasis through techniques discussed in the assigned materials.
