This page lists all of the assignments that you will complete throughout the semester, including the grade weights, grading criteria, and due dates. Click on any assignment from the list below to view a complete description of the assignment.

Job Application Materials Assignment
Instructions Assignment
Proposal for Recommendation Report
Oral Presentation Assignment
Multicultural Exercise
Personal Web Design
Completion Report
Final Exam
Homework Assignment
Quizzes

Job Application Materials Assignment

The Assignment:
In a newspaper or journal or on the Internet, identify a job for which you have the qualifications to apply, and develop the application materials. Include in your job application materials portfolio:

The job ad or a photocopy of it.
Company description (e.g. what does this company do, how does it use people in the position for which you will apply, where is it located, other features of the company such as a good training program that might attract qualified candidates (this should be no longer than a page)
Job description: this may be one you find at the website or Career Center or one you develop based on other information you find at the website or Career Center. What are specific qualifications and responsibilities for the position?
Application letter
Resumé

The Purpose of the Assignment:

The purpose of this assignment is to give you practice in writing a job-application letter and résumé. These documents are, of course, the first example of your writing that a prospective employer will see. In writing these documents, you will gain valuable experience in audience analysis and document design. In addition, you will see the value in presenting yourself ethically and professionally. It demonstrates your ability to make critical decisions and in analyzing your own skills with respect to the unique characteristics of the job to which you apply.

Do not use MS Word or any other software programs' wizards or templates to build your resumé or letter for this assignment. Employers have seen them too often, and they often appear "canned."

You must have four paragraphs for your letter: introduction, education, job experience and conclusion. The education and job experience must have at least five lines.

In your letter, don't just provide information; make a case. The chapter describes the kind of information that people routinely put in their job materials. But, don't be content merely to provide the information. Instead, make the case-that you have the skills, the experience, and the character to do the job.

The introduction and the conclusion must have the conventional information as shown in the samples of the chapter.

The education and job experience paragraphs must be well-focused on one or two strongest parts of your expertise and skills for the job advertised. You need use examples or evidence to show why you are strong in the aspects you state, such as professors' comments, benefits or advantages of the things you did. In other words, don't simply say you did this or that, explain how well you did them.

For the résumé, you must have five required sections such as personal identifying information, objective, education, job experience, and reference. Optional sections may depend on your special cases. They may include qualifications, key words, skills and abilities,, interests and activities, awards, membership, and other additional information.

Grading Criteria:

Contents and organization (30 points)

You must have five sections for your résumé:

Personal identifying information section (10%) includes: your name, address, email, phone number, zip code.

Education section (20%),includes your graduation date, your school's name and address, GPA, and 6 courses

Employment section (20%) which includes the relevant jobs you did, where you did them, the time period, and

your job responsibilities. You must select those that are relevant and important to the job requirements.

Job objective 5% Your job objective should be specific and relevant

Optional section 10%, which might be your special skills. memberships, awards, etc.

Document design 10%: use the right font size, style, white space, and chunking.

Organization and 10%: the resume is organized in the way that best shows the applicant's qualifications.

Correctness 15%: no typo, grammatical error and wrong words.

Instructions Assignment

The Assignment:
You will write instructions for performing a task and present the instructions with an introduction and illustrations, as appropriate. As a result of using your instructions, a reader will be able to complete the task successfully and without frustration.

The Purpose of the Assignment:
Whether you work with office staff, technicians, managers, or executives, you will frequently be called on to write instructions. Some common occasions for instructional writing include writing specifications for technical activities, describing office procedures, preparing training manuals, and explaining how to perform operations on a computer system. An important aspect of instructional writing is the use of graphics and design: good instructions contains graphics and are designed to be easy to read and understand. Therefore, another important purpose of this assignment is to improve your skills in the visual dimension of technical communication.

You will give instructions on a task we don't know how to do but one we could reasonably expect to learn from your paper.

This requirement eliminates common tasks such as shampooing hair (which all your classmates know how to do) and complex tasks such as learning to swim or playing the trumpet, which takes a manual

to explain). No recipes, but you could give instructions on using a specialized piece of cooking equipment, such as a wok, or on some specialized procedure for preparing food. Other unacceptable topics: changing oil in a car, changing a tire, artificial insemination.

*Choose a procedure with at least five but no more than seven major steps.*

You may have sub-steps. Preferably choose a procedure related to your major or work.

Examples of procedures that have worked well in the past:
preparing a microscope slide, serving wine
measuring blood pressure, changing a flush valve in a toilet
making a topographical map, measuring sodium,
pruning a tree, mounting an insect, dehorning cattle
implanting a growth hormone in a steer's ear,
measuring square feet of a house, and creating a "style" in Microsoft Word

Visual Design and Usability:

Design your instruction in a brochure format.
Use headings to show major divisions, "white space" and other typographical devices to call attention to warnings, and illustrations (properly labeled and placed) as helpful. Use a running header and page numbers to identify the project on each page. If you use secondary sources to get information on the procedure or illustrations, document with a "Works Cited" list.
Your audience and assumptions should be clear from your introduction, but if additional information would help me evaluate your work, please let me know in a memo of transmittal.

Grading Criteria:

Introduction 40%

1. Audience and purpose (7.5%)

(Who is your audience? How much much does s/he know your subject? What is the purpose of your instruction? You must state these explicitly for me to know your understanding of audience needs and communication purpose.)

2. Items needed (7.5%)

(Tools and materials needed; please use a list for them.)

3. Safety information (25%)

(Design your safety information, using color, font size, box,

and proper terminology)

Body 50%

Number the steps (5%)

(chronological order)

Appropriate amount of information (10%)

(Not excessive nor oversimplified information)

Use imperative mood. (5%)

Graphics (25%)

You must have graphics.

(They should be informative, not decorative.)

Do not omit articles. (a, an, the.)

Don’t confuse feedback with steps. (5%)

Document Design 10%

1. Use of white space.

2. Use of fonts. (size and style)

3. Integration of verbal text with graphics.

(Please follow design principles you have learned.)

Proposal for the Recommendation Report

The Purpose of the Assignment:
The main purpose of this assignment is to give you practice in writing proposals. Even if you never write a long, complex, formal proposal submitted to a large government agency, you will almost certainly write an informal proposal to a supervisor, such as you will do with this exercise--only your supervisor is your instructor. When you want to receive authorization to change a procedure carried out in your office, purchase a new piece of laboratory equipment, or advertise to hire a new employee, you will probably be asked to write a proposal in which you make clear what the problem is that requires action, how you plan to carry out the project, and what you think the results will be.

The Assignment:
To complete this assignment successfully, please:

1. refer to the proposal sample on pages 420-424.

2. identify a problematic situation either at your workplace, or on campus, or in your city.

3. have a clear idea of

●Who your reader is.

●What problem you want to solve.

●What your criteria are for a suitable solution.

●What research/investigative methods you will use to gather information to solve

the problem.

4. In case you can't find a problem, the list below will help you.

Grading Criteria:

1) Audience awareness: How well do you analyze your audience and recognize their needs in this proposal? Is the problem presented in a way that the reader can understand and appreciate? How do you justify to your audience the need to implement your proposal? Appropriate level of detail given. Appropriate assessment of audience's knowledge and concerns. (40 points)

2) Answer readers' questions/Content: What is the problem? Why is it a problem? How will you solve the problem? What do you propose to do exactly? (20 points)

3) Parts of the Proposal including: (20 points)

Cover memo
Summary
Introduction
Proposed program
Qualifications and experience
Budget
References (if applicable)
Appendices (if applicable)

Specific guideline for your proposal (Remember to refer to the sample on page 420. but you mustn’t follow the sentences patterns and words used in the samples. Otherwise your grade well be ‘C.’ )

Remember you need to have eight sections: purpose, summary, introduction, proposed procedure, schedule, qualifications, budget, and references. (The memo headings are not included in the eight sections, but you must have them.

Purpose: In this section, use one sentence to state that you want to get approval for doing research into the feasibility of …… (You should not have other purposes than doing a feasibility study; for this is a research proposal)

Summary: Briefly state the background information, mention the four tasks you have in the proposal, mention your schedule, budget for the proposal, and your qualifications. (see sample) That is to say you need to talk a little bit of every section (references excluded here) in the summary.

Introduction: In this section, you need to:

1). State your purpose, identify a problem in the first paragraph.

2). Then you explain the background information which includes:

Causes for the problem, (in the sample, the writer has: increased members, limited printers, poor print quality)
Serious consequences, lowered productivity, affects the company’s reputation.
Significance of the proposal (help solve the problem by providing data for decision maker to adopt the best solution.
Sources of your information (in the sample, they include two associates and Ms. Rydell.

3) Forecast the organization.

4) If you have a special term, please define it.

5. The proposed program. In this section, it is advisable that you have four tasks.

Task 1 is devoted to the finding of data to support the your claim that the problem must be solved as it is so serious. In writing this task, state its purpose, the research method (such as interview, survey, or library or internet research). Justify it, and explain its contents (for example, if you are interviewing, what are your questions?)

Task 2 is to establish criteria for solving the problem such as those for buying a car etc. in this case, you say you would consider the criteria in terms of the company’s needs. You would consider the criteria in terms of price, loading capacity, color, gas consumption, service life, and brand. This is to let the manager know you have a scientific and reasonable way to solve the problem.

Task 3 is to evaluate things in light of the criteria you established. (for example, to do market

investigations so as to find out the products that satisfy the criteria.)

Task 4 is to write a completion report. Everyone has the same task here!

(Since you are doing research, you need to turn in a completion report when the project is ended. (The deliverable). But the report is not this time’s assignment; do not confuse them. You just say that by the end of April, you will turn in a report that discusses your findings, conclusion, and your recommendation. )

You need to make sure when all the tasks are finished, the project is completed.

Schedule: In this section, you need to have a bar chart or other graphics you think appropriate to show your schedule. You really need a graphic here.

Qualification: In this section, you can tell your relevant education background, job experience, some experts who can help you, or your achievements.

Budget : In this section, you use a table to list the itemized cost. Don’t list the cost for the product you recommend to buy. It is the cost for your research! Don’t confuse them.

References. You can follow MLA style guide to list your interviewees and the books or article you have read.

You need to have an outline or a rough draft before the oral presentation starts. The assignment is to be four pages long (about 1100 words). You must have a graphic for your schedule and a table for your budget. You need to label them as well. If you are not sure, please ask me. You need to have at least four sources.

This assignment requires you to identify a problem and prompts you to solve it in the form of a proposal. You must follow the instructions to complete the assignment. If you really cannot find a problem, I have a list for your references. See the following.

Improving living conditions in your dorm
creating a student-oriented advertising agency on campus
creating a day-care center on campus
saving labor materials, or money on the job
improving working conditions
supplying a product or a service to clients
improving campus facilities for the handicapped.
increasing tourism in your city
improving security in dorms or in the library
adding a certain course to the curriculum
improving faculty advising for students
purchasing new equipment
changing grading system or certain policy at your school
making a course more relevant to students’ need
easing freshmen students through the transition to college
improving tutoring in the learning center
findings ways for an organization to raise money
creating a new business or expanding a business

4) Style and editing

Consistent and appropriate font choices. Conventional genre format. Appropriate use of visual

aids. Use of standard edited English. You need to have four pages with at least 1200

words.(20 points)

Tips to Remember:

1) Write an internal proposal. For an internal proposal, you have to make the case that you (and any other personnel) are qualified and that you have the other necessary resources.

2) This is a research proposal, not a goods-and-services proposal. You are seeking permission to carry out a research project in exchange for the organization's time and other resources. Do not write a goods-and-service proposal: for example, a proposal to renovate a house, but you can write the feasibility study of renovating the house.

Oral Presentation Assignment

The Purpose of the Assignment:
The purpose for this assignment is to give you practice in designing and delivering oral presentations. In addition, this will also give you valuable practice in listening and note-taking as you will be evaluating other presenters and asking questions. This assignment asks you to be prepared, but it also asks you to think on your feet. You must be prepared to answer the audience's questions, so you will have to know your stuff!

Preparation for the presentation (can be in PowerPoint format, or handouts, or transparent, or other forms you are comfortable with)

You need to have graphics for this presentation (Informative rather than decorative).

The Assignment:
You will prepare a 5-7 minute presentation to your classmates and me based upon your proposal. You will have to speak without having turned in your final draft of your proposal, but you should have enough information for your presentation. Your purpose is to introduce us to your topic, but perhaps most important, to the research process you took to complete your proposal, the logical and reasonable steps you took, qualifications, the schedule and budget you planned for your proposal. Following your talk, your classmates will then ask questions of you for no more than 2 minutes. You must be careful to stick within this time frame so that everyone will get the full amount of time with enough time for questions and answers after each presentation.

Audience and Selection of Task:
Your audience consists of your fellow classmates and me. You can prepare your report as if you were giving a presentation at your workplace, so it needs to be professional, polished, and concise. With only 7 minutes to present, you will not have time or room for errors.

Questions to consider as you prepare your talk: What questions were you trying to answer? Which options were you exploring? What methods did you use? (describe, show examples, etc.) What results did you find? What problems did you encounter while researching? How did you solve them? What continues to puzzle you about your project? What disappointed/surprised you the most?

Evaluation Criteria

You will be graded in light of Markel's Evaluation Form

Personal Web design

This assignment helps you apply all the knowledge you have learned in this semester.

You need to demonstrate your clear awareness of your audience and purpose. You will also follow the eight measures of excellence for technical communication, which are honesty, clarity, accuracy, comprehensiveness, accessibility, conciseness, professional appearance, and correctness. Specifically, you web site must:

have the common Web components
be well focused on a topic
have a good audience awareness
have short download time
have interesting and helpful graphics
be professionally presented
have necessary links
use frames or tables
have contact information
use document design features
have a feedback form
have 2000 words
have four or five pages
have more verbal information than visual information on each page

Try to avoid the following weaknesses:

Backgrounds: Default gray color; Color combinations of text and background that make the text hard to read; Busy, distracting backgrounds that make the text hard to read
Text: Text that is too small to read; Text crowding against the left edge; Text that stretches all the way across the page; Centered type over flush left body copy; Paragraphs of type in all caps; Paragraphs of type in bold; Paragraphs of type in italic; Paragraphs of type in all caps, bold, and italic all at once; Underlined text that is not a link
Graphics: Large graphic files that take forever to load; Meaningless or useless graphics; Thumbnail images that are nearly as large as the full-sized images they link to; Graphics with no alt labels; Missing graphics, especially missing graphics with no alt labels; Graphics that don't fit on the screen (assuming a screen of 640x460 pixels)
Navigation: Unclear navigation; over complex navigation; Complicated frames, too many frames, unnecessary scroll bars in frames; Orphan pages (no links back to where they came from, no identification); Useless page titles that don't explain what the page is about
General Design: Entry page or home page that does not fit within standard browser window (640 x 460 pixels); Frames that make you scroll sideways; No focal point on the page; Too many focal points on the page; Navigation buttons as the only visual interest, especially when they're large (and dorky); Cluttered, not enough alignment of elements; Lack of contrast (in color, text, to create hierarchy of information, etc.); Pages that look okay in one browser but not in another

Grading Criteria

Audience awareness (20%)

Content (40%)

(have the designated functions, word count, significant and instructive

information, adequate supporting details, table, form, and well focused)

Design features (20%)

(good accessibility, professional appearance, and rich design features)

Following the design principles (20%)

(observing principles of alignment, contrast, repetition, and proximate while

having no errors listed above.)

Multicultural Exercise

Purpose

The purpose of this project is to develop a sensitivity to multicultural issues in a diverse environment and a cultural awareness in cross-cultural technical communication. The outcome is a proposal to provide instructional materials for helping either an American student to adapt to a foreign culture, or an international student to adapt to American culture in cross-cultural communication.

To complete this assignment, please follow the following instructions:

Study Chapters 5 and 6 of your text.
Identify a specific occasion where you can help a student with cross-cultural communication. These specific occasions include: going to a party, writing a business letter, doing an oral presentation, etc. Using Hall's theory of high-context culture and low-context culture or other cross-cultural communication theories.
As a group, choose the target country to research (also see point 4 below).
Use research methods such as interviewing, internet research, and library research to collect the data you need.
Compile your findings in a 2,000 to 2,500-word guide explaining the culture for the person that needs your instruction. Include proper documentation of your sources. (See Appendix Part A for advice on taking notes and documenting sources.)

Grading

1. Complete structure (introduction, body (at least three paragraphs), and conclusion. 10%

2. Well focused on a specific communication problem and well-developed organization.20%

3. Adequate use of cross-cultural communication theories 30%

4. Good recommendations. 30%

5. 2000 words at least 10%

General Resources

Country Studies-home

Asia University Center for English Language Education I contacted this Center to inquire about communication with students from Asia (June 5, 2003)

Overview of the Models for Understanding Cultural Differences

A Sample of the Assignment

Recommendation Report

The Purpose of the Assignment
The purpose of this assignment is to give you practice in writing recommendation reports. In this assignment you bring together the skills and experience you gain this semester, especially in writing the proposal, and oral presentation.

Your completion report will be based on your research proposal, so it is important you read the sample

of the proposal on page 420 and the sample report on 472 so as to see how a report is developed from its proposal. You need to be aware of the following tips:

1) Use your word processor effectively. Major components of the recommendation report are revisions of components from the proposal, which you will write after you have done your preliminary investigation of the problem and gathered sufficient reader knowledge.

2) Include the formal elements discussed in Chapter 12:

a letter of transmittal
a title page
an informative abstract
a table of contents
a list of illustrations (if appropriate)
an executive summary, a glossary (if appropriate)
appendices

For the documentation of sources, use the APA style or another style that is more appropriate in your discipline (see the text for explanations of CBE, APA, and MLA styles). You can make a table of contents automatically by choosing Insert | Tables and Figures | Table of Contents. (If you use this method, format the items in the table of contents to match the design of the headings in the report.)

3) Study the Revision Checklist on page 579 to be sure you have included the necessary elements of the body of the report, and that each element fulfills its function.

4) Review the draft of your recommendation report to check that it presents a clear, logical argument. The introduction should describe a problem or opportunity, the methods should describe how you carried out the project, the results should present your data, the conclusion should analyze the results and convey their essential meaning, and the recommendations should explain what you should think should be done next.

5) Present in the body of the report only the information you think your principal reader will need. Put more detailed but less critical information into appendices, to which you refer in the body.

6) Include graphics to help your reader understand and remember your main points. Review Chapter 14 on graphics.

7) Edit and proofread carefully. The recommendation report is a big project, and most writers are exhausted when they complete it. But the difference between a good report and an excellent one is often one last hour of work. First, be sure you let the report sit overnight before your final revision. Then, check to make sure you have included page numbers in the table of contents, that the headings in the table of contents match those in the body of the report, and that graphics are referenced and labeled correctly. Go through the whole document, making sure each component is clear and complete, and in its proper place.

Grading Criteria:

1) Audience awareness: How well do you analyze your audience and recognize their needs in this report? Is the problem/solutions presented in a way that the reader can understand and appreciate? How do you justify to your audience the need to implement your recommendations? Appropriate level of detail given. Appropriate assessment of audience's knowledge and concerns. (40 points)

2) Answer readers' questions/Content: What is the problem? Why is it a problem? What research methods did you use to solve the problem? What is the basis for your recommendations? (20 points)

3) Parts of the Report including the formal elements discussed in Chapter 12: (20 points)
   1.Letter of transmittal (Read page 467 and sample on page 475)
   2.Title page (See sample on 476 )
   3.Informative abstract (Read 468 and sample on 477)
   4.Table of contents (Read page 469 and see sample on 478)
   5.List of illustrations (if appropriate)
   6.Executive summary (Read page 470 and sample on 479)

7.The body (Don't forget to use graphics and tables in this part)

(Introduction: contextual info. background info. problem, method, conclusion

and recommendation)

(Method section: Explain what you did with the methods you described in your proposal)

(Results section: Explain what did you find from using the methods you described)

(Conclusion section: Explain what do the findings imply)

     (Recommendation section: make recommendations on the implications of your findings)
   8.Glossary (if appropriate)
   9.Appendices

4) Style and editing Running headers and footers. Consistent and appropriate font choices. Conventional genre format. Appropriate use of visual aids. Use of standard edited English. (20 points)

Quizzes

Weight 5%

There will be 3 quizzes throughout the semester. Each quiz contains 20 questions from the chapters you have read. They will be presented in the form of objective questions which have only one correct answer to each of them and or have short answers. You will be graded according to the number of right answers you have scored. Please read every chapter carefully (Each question is 5 points).

Final Exam

Layout of the exam:

The final will be held in our computer classroom. On the day of the final, you will be able to download the exam directly from our website. Since it will be in Word format, you should be able to type your responses directly in Word and print it out. You will complete the entire exam in the classroom. You will not be allowed to use your book or any notes; your responses will come directly from your knowledge of the course materials.

Your final exam will be comprehensive, thus it will cover many of the major areas that we have covered this semester in 3303. Some major areas that you might want to look back over to prepare for the exam include:

workplace correspondence (memos, letters, email)
research practices
document design and usability
ethical practices
instructions
proposals and reports
job application materials
style and organization of technical documents

You will be given ten questions (each worth 10 points). Each question will require you to write a short response (typically about two to three paragraphs in length unless specified otherwise).

Homework: (10%)

This requires you to read each Chapter assigned on the day of the class, and then answer the corresponding web board questions. You will have to answer the questions in class, or participate in class discussion.

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