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ENG135

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Business & Technical Writing & Research

EnglishLiberal Arts
OverviewGoals, Topics, and ObjectivesAssessment, Requirements, and OutcomesRegister for this Course

Course Goals

Students will learn to apply the rhetorical principles and techniques characteristic of professional communication. As a result of analyzing and writing documents, such as memos, letters, proposals, instructions, and reports, as well as preparing and delivering a short oral presentation, they will see how communication is an important dimension of professional effectiveness. They will become familiar with the following: • The role of written, graphical, and oral communication within organizations. • The challenges and problems associated with professional communication, including ethical concerns. • The various audiences targeted by professional communication and the importance of adapting to them. • The importance of information literacy in communicating effectively in professional settings. • The methods of creating an effective professional voice or ethos in a document. • The use of computer technology as a critical tool in professional communication.

Core Course Topics

  1. Critical Thinking & Information Literacy

    Ability to analyze and evaluate information and identify the need for research to draw conclusions, formulate inferences, solve problems and make decisions. Students will also demonstrate information literacy skills by locating, evaluating, selecting, organizing, synthesizing, and ethically documenting information from multiple sources using both informal and formal formats, as appropriate for diverse writing situations.

  2. Communication

    Ability to effectively communicate ideas appropriate to their discipline using standard English, through written and verbal communication.

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

Ability to read and understand a document and to organize a response suitable for the intended audience.

Ability to develop communication using effective rhetorical techniques and persuasive language.

Ability to generate and develop a defensible inference based on available information.

Ability to find and evaluate research material in terms of its credibility, accuracy, bias, and ethics.

Ability to incorporate selected research material effectively and purposefully into an assignment by using quotation, paraphrase, and a formal documentation style and by distinguishing clearly between sources of information.

Ability to synthesize those sources with the students own experience of a topic.

Ability to use page design (including sectioning and headings) and visual aids to enhance a documents readability and persuasiveness.

Ability to edit prose for grammatical correctness, accuracy, and diction and style appropriate for the audience.

Ability to purposefully critique their own and others written documents.