Today’s Plan:
- Report Expectations
- Discussion Section
- Homework
Report Expectations
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:
You 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. While the tone and language should be aimed at our primary audience, we should also keep in mind the secondary audiences that will interact with this document.
So we have multiple audiences for this report:
- 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)
Again, our primary goal is to convince high school students to major in Writing, Editing, and Publishing or English Language Arts (perhaps with a minor in writing). We want to show them that our programs speak to the demands they will find in job advertisements.
Let’s Talk About What *This* Report Should Look Like
Something to Understand: there isn’t merely one standard format for a report. This isn’t like APA or MLA formatting where we can turn to a guide and have a specific, fixed set of expectations with which to work. When it comes to professional writing, both the content and its arrangement will likely be heavily context dependent.
My aim with this project is to give you a sense of what you can expect across a wide range of different situations. Here’s what I want to see in this report:
- Front Loaded Introduction (combination Executive Summary and Intro): 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 we analyze the job ads? Finaly, what did we do to ensure that our data was reliable? There needs to be a quick discussion of Brumberger and Lauer here.
- Findings: 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 [descriptive paragraphs after graphs]? Generally, these reports have three graphs–one on Tools and Tech, one on Professional Competencies, and one on Personal Characteristics
- Discussion: See below.
Outside of these content demands, there’s a few stylistic expectations:
- Length: Generally this report is 6-8 pages singled-spaced (this includes a title page, a table of content, and properly sized charts/graphs)
- 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; we will be working on this next Wednesday in the lab)?
- 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, reference citation.
Let’s take a look at a section from Alred, Brusaw, and Oliu’s Handbook of Technical Writing on formal reports.
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?). I’ll put my feedback into that Google Doc.
Discussion Section
So, I like to say that when it comes to a report like this–or almost any qualitative research project–you don’t really do much thinking until after you’ve collected the data. This is why I have you write the methodology section first. Because that really shouldn’t take too much thinking on your part. You’re just summarizing previous work (a la Lauer and Brumberger–you are picking up a project in medias res). But even if you did the job coding, that’s not a lot of thinking. It is a lot of reading, and, yeah, you might think about whether a particular signifier calls for a particular code, but–trust me–it is mostly mindless.
Creating graphs isn’t thinking either. It is simply translating data into a different form. I do ask that you summarize your graphs, and that requires some insight. But again, not a *ton* of thinking here.
Now we reach the discussion section. And now we have some serious thinking to do. I expect this section to do a few things.
First, it needs to put the data you presented in your findings in discussion with Brumberger and Lauer and, maybe, Lauer and Brumberger. This will require you to look at the results from the 2015 article and/or the observations from the 2019 article and find meaningful connections with the data section here. Full disclosure: you probably wouldn’t do this in a report aimed at high school students. But you would do this if you were speaking to administration or faculty. Put this research in conversation with previous research to amplify its validity and persuasiveness. This is hard to do.
Second, and more on point to our hypothetical task. You have to take the tools and technology codes and professional competencies codes and prove that a UNC education can provide those things. We are arguing not only that there actually are a wide range of jobs out there for writers (are we arguing that Or are we just stating that in the introduction?), but also that a UNC education can prepare you for those jobs. So, for every code that appears in the findings section, you should mention a class here at UNC–or maybe two, or maybe three classes–that speak to it. What classes are UNC really helped teach you to write? Which instructors are worthy of praise?
In a previous class notes, I linked to two documents that might help you think through this. And I’ll throw in a third:
Remember that you do not have to write specifically about how the WEP major, or even the writing minor, prepares you for a career in writing. On element of this report is my attempt to get you to engage in a bit of positive psychology: to recognize that there is value in the work that you are doing, that there are jobs out there for you after you graduate. Because there is! And there are! (And, if I were not likely already pressed for time, I would stress that the value of a degree should not solely be tied to vocational preparation, but also to creating critical and empathetic people capable of living meaningful lies and participating in democratic deliberation, but chances are I’m up against the end of class!).
Homework
Remember to read the Corder essay and complete the discussion assignment for Monday. We’ll work on editing prose (characters and actions) in the computer lab on Wednesday. We’ll look at sample reports in class on Friday. The final report will be due before next class on Monday the 25th.
