Today’s Plan:
- Syllabus and Stuff
- Reading ABO on emails, UNCO Style Guide
- Composing and Sharing Emails
- Homework
Syllabus and Stuff
Let’s take a look at the ENG 201 Syllabus.
A First Day Assignment
The first genre we are going to work with this semester is emails. I expect all correspondence between us to reflect the principles laid out by ABO on pages 164-168.
A few other resources for today:
I’d like you to compose a short email to me (marc dot santos at unco dot edu) that does three things:
- introduces yourself (and your academic/professional trajectory) and
- explains your interest in the course (what are you hoping to learn? why are you here?)
- asks me a question that I can answer
I’ll give you time to compose your emails and then we will read them collectively as a class.
Homework
To prepare for project one, read Brumberger and Lauer’s (2015) “The Evolution of Technical Communication: An Analysis of Industry Job Postings.” You can find a .pdf of the file in Canvas (Files section). I would like you to print out a physical copy of the article and annotate it as you read.
By annotate, I mean I would like you to write comments in the margins and on top of the page. There’s a lot of different methods for annotating, and I wouldn’t force any one method on you. I tend to underline text that either highlights the author’s purpose/argument or that I find difficult or disagree with. BUT every time I underline something, I try to write a word or phrase at the top of the page that captures the essence/importance of that passage. Underlining without writing isn’t useful. Writing notes in the margins helps with retention and comprehension. Throw away your highlighter.
After you read and annotate, please post a 150-250 word response to the article in Canvas. In the future, I might ask you to focus your response on a specific element of a reading. For our first reading, I simply want to know what in the article surprises you. I also want to know what else you wished the author’s elaborated.
