CAREER WRITING SYNTHESIS REQUIREMENTS

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he goal of this unit is for students to continue to delve more deeply into the strategies of rhetoric through an introduction to rhetorical analysis of sources related to their major, potential major, and/or possible future career. This will take up all of Weeks 4-5-6 to complete all parts of the assignment. FINAL IS DUE: Tues. 10/13.

YOUR AUDIENCE: The target audience for this paper will be other OU students who might be contemplating a career in your chosen field.

YOUR PURPOSE: Your purpose for writing this synthesis is to provide a guideline for other students to use when “shopping” for a career choice.

RUBRIC: For this project, you will provide a synthesis of the following:

1) 10 pts. – ARTIFACTS: Two or more good career sample artifacts of writing from your field. A brief description of each and what type of writing they represent in the field. These will be Appendix A & B in your paper.

2) 10 pts. – INTERVIEW: Transcript of an interview you will have with a professional working in the field. You will have the final interview transcribed and uploaded to Moodle. This will be Appendix C in your paper.

3) 40 pts. – A narrower, more focused and DETAILED ANALYSIS of communication practices within the field will comprise the majority of the paper broken down as follows:

A. 10 pts: Rhetorical analysis of your artifacts

B. 10 pts: Writing in the field: when, why, how much, what types of writing/communicating?

C. 5 pts: How rhetorical appeals are used to communicate effectively in the field f

D. 5 pts: Controversies in the field

E. 5 pts: Public perception of communication in the field (you’ll use a survey to find this out)

F. 5 pts: Paper’s syntactic fluency/control of language conventions for an academic audience.

WRITING THE DETAILED ANALYSIS

This whole detailed analysis will be a minimum of 4-6 pages long typed, double spaced, and it will be developed through multiple drafts and peer review. In the detailed analysis, you will include 2 types of research:

A. Secondary: An overview of the field. It will encompass a synthesis of all you’ve learned from at least 3 outside secondary sources (i.e. journal articles, magazine articles, newspaper articles, pamphlets, brochures, online material, videos, etc.) and must include these three items:

How one can best be prepared to write in the field, what people are writing, forms of media used. Also include the amount of text composed on a regular basis & types of texts composed

How one uses ethos, pathos, and logos when communicating in this field. Explain how the writing/communicating may be geared towards different audiences and for different purposes.

Discussion of the current controversies within this field. How are they perceived, what’s being written about them, and how may they be resolved?

B. Primary:

At least two artifacts of writing in this field (i.e., a lesson plan, a report, a memo, a proposal, a web page) attached as appendices, which you will rhetorically analyze in the paper. You can ask your interviewee for these or go to the internet to find some. You will provide an overview of what types of texts are regularly composed in the field and the two artifacts will be used as examples.

At least one interview with a professional in the field or an advanced major (in a graduate program). You can use what you learn to write the analysis. NOTE: It is VERY important to make contact with your prospective interview subjects early in this project.

A survey or questionnaire by which you gather public perception from people not working in the field (their perceptions about how people THINK communication works in this field). The survey will also be included in a Moodle Forum.