Course Description
What you will learn:
This course teaches you to write rhetorically-effective business documents. By "rhetorically effective" I mean documents that are not only clear, concise, informative and well edited, but also persuasive and build goodwill between yourself and the reader. We will focus on learning how to maintain goodwill with your readers while making demands of them. The specific business documents we will work on include email/memos, letters, resumes, proposals and reports.
Towards this goal you will study, practice, and develop the skills necessary to organize and present material logically, clearly and concisely; edit your work for maximum accuracy; analyze and meet the needs of specific audiences; and display a commitment to use rhetorical skills in an ethical and professional manner.
In short, this course attempts to teach you how to use the written word to get the things you want and need.
This course centers around the following assumptions:
1) The business and administrative world is highly competitive. It rewards with success only those who can prove they are capable, trustworthy, and can supply something valuable to the customer or organization. It punishes with failure those cannot prove they are capable, trustworthy and valuable.
2) By taking this class, you are showing that would like to join that world and would prefer to be rewarded with success rather than punished with failure.
3) In the business and administrative world, each and every piece of writing produced for others to read automatically becomes a lasting piece of evidence testifying to its author's capability, trustworthiness and value. Therefore, every effective and well-written document you produce will help contribute to your reputation as an intelligent, ethical, good-willed and valuable business person. Every ineffective, poorly-written, dishonest or pointless piece of writing you produce will contribute to your reputation as a stupid, untrustworthy, mean and pointless piece of dead weight.
In other words, when your effectiveness and value are evaluated, and the rewards or punishments are handed out, what you have written will be used as hard evidence of your worth or worthlessness.
Therefore: In order to succeed in this world, you need to learn to write well.