Today’s Plan:
- Miller, Humanism, and the “New” Epistemology
- Job Ads Report Expectations
- What Can the ABO Book Tell Us About Reports?
- Reviewing Methodology Sections
- Homework
Miller, Humanism, and the “New” Epistemology
Quick review: Herrick, rhetoric, feedback.
My initial questions:
- What is positivism? Why is it a problem for technical writing? What does Miller identify as the most problematic dimension of a non-rhetorical approach to scientific communication?
- Miller identifies 4 problems for technical writing pedagogy that stem from the positivist tradition. How do we avoid them?
- How does Miller–writing in 1979–describe the epistemology that is replacing positivism? [Note: scare-quoting “new”]
- What does it mean to teach technical writing from a communalist perspective? Why might some students reject a communalist approach to teaching writing?
Conclusion: Katz. Arendt and Arendt.
Job Ad Report Expectations
Our first major paper this semester is the Job Ad Report. Generally this report is 6-8 pages, single-spaced (including title page, table of contents, and potential appendix). It does not need a formal reference list.
Rhetorical situation: we have been hired by the UNCo Department of English to write a report that can be delivered to high school seniors, and their parents, discussing the current job market for English majors. The report will also be distributed to University Administrators and used to leverage funding for the Department. The report will be shared with faculty in the Department ahead of a round of curricular revisions.
So we have multiple audiences for this report:
- Client: English Department
- Primary Audience: High School Seniors
- Secondary Audiences: Parents (who may or may not be skeptical that English is a viable career field), Administrators (who may or may not be skeptical of investing more resources in English, particularly money on technology-driven classes/computer labs), Faculty (who may or may not still see the mission of English tied to the traditional Liberal Arts education)
Specs:
- Length: Generally this report is 6-8 pages singled-spaced (this includes a title page, a table of content, and properly sized charts/graphs)
- Front Loaded Introduction: Does the intro summarize all significant findings and include specific, actionable recommendations?
- Methodology: The methodology section needs to do a few things. First, how did I collect the job ads (I described this process in a blog post, condense my Brumberger and Lauer discussion)? Second, how did you select your 20 jobs from the job corpus? Third, from where did we draw our coding scheme? Fourth, what did we do to ensure that our data was reliable? Could I recreate this work based on this section?
- Presentation of Data: Does the section contain a table or graph of data?
Can you understand the table or graph, or is there some mystery meat?
Does the writer make clear what the table or graph says? (Is there summary of visuals?) - Discussion of Data: Does the writer highlight significant or unexpected elements of the data? Does the writer put the data in conversation with previous research (Brumberger and Lauer)? Does the writer make specific recommendations based on the data?
- Style and Grammar [commas, run-ons, fragments, tense shifts, agreement errors, etc]
Does the paper reflect our work on style (Williams and Bizup, Characters and Actions)? - Does this paper reflect expectations for business formatting? (Check the ABO book)
- Title Page
- Page Numbers (should not include the title page)
- Also, this is a professional report, not an academic paper. We are not using APA or MLA format for citing sources. Instead, we will rely on AP style–which uses in-line citation.
Finally, you should draft and revise this paper in the same Google Doc. I will check the document history to see if it indicates that the paper was given a careful edit? (And/or, is the document relatively error free? Are there sentences in which grammatical errors lead to misunderstanding?)
Skipping this in Spring 2022:
What Can the ABO Book Tell Us About Reports?
I expect that, for many of you, this could be your first exposure to professional, rather than academic, writing. So let’s raid the ABO book and see what we can learn about professional writing and the report genre.
The ABO book contains sections on:
- Feasibility Reports
- Formal Reports
- Investigative Reports
- Tables and Graphs (presenting data
Look at the sample proposal on 439. Sample feasibility report, 187-188. Sample formal report 202-218. Sample investigative report 291.
Reviewing the Methodology Section
I asked you to spend the weekend drafting a methodology section, addressing the 3 central concerns of a methodology section:
- How did we collect our research objects (in this case, job ads)?
- How did we analyze our research objects (coding)?
- How did we ensure our analysis was reliable?
Let’s look at a few methodology sections from previous semesters.
Homework
In Thursday’s class we will work in the 1240 computer lab on the presentation of data in the report. We will spend 20 minutes reviewing codes. Then we will spend 20 minutes generating data sheets. Finally, I will show you how to generate and edit charts in Google Sheets and insert them into your Google Doc.
This paper will be due Friday, February 11th at 11:59pm. I’m pushing this back a bit this semester (I’ve given you extra time to complete the coding), so we’ll be a little crunched with our next project. Upcoming schedule:
- In Thursday’s class, we will finalize our data. Your homework for next weekend will be to write the methodology and data sections of the report.
- On Tuesday, Feb 8th, we will review methodology sections and brainstorm discussion (how to make data meaningful)
- On Thursday Feb 10th, I will review introductions in class. You will have some work time then, too.
- Final papers are due on Friday at midnight because I am aiming for a very fast turn around–I hope to have all of the papers returned by Tuesday’s class.
- Remember that you can visit the Writing Center for this first project, and that I have office hours on Fridays from 12:00 to 2:30 if you have questions regarding the paper
- For Tuesday of week 6, For next Thursday’s class, I will ask you to read Jim Corder’s essay “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love” and complete the Canvas assignment. We will discuss Corder’s essay, and I will layout the Project 2 mini-assignments (I am trying something different this year)
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