The overall aim of English 309 is to help you to become confident, flexible, effective communicators who can size up an on-the-job communication situation, make a plan for writing in that situation, and carry out that plan with skill and flair.
This course is designed to prepare you to accomplish the following objectives:
To achieve these course objectives, we will try to follow the these three strategies:
- Analyze each communication situation fully and accurately for information needs, audience, uses of information, and communication constraints
- Gather, interpret, and document information logically, efficiently, and ethically
- Develop professional work and teamwork habits
- Design usable, clear, persuasive, and accessible documents
- Select the appropriate method for presenting information
- Organize information using reader-based principles
- Use graphics effectively
- Develop an effective, clear writing style
- Learning general approaches and principles to prepare you to write effectively in the wide variety of communication situations you will encounter on the job.
- Learning to think constantly about your readers. By thinking about your readers in the act of reading, you will be able to predict your readers' thoughts, feelings, needs, and desires--and you will be able to design your messages accordingly.
- Focusing on real-world writing. Through class discussions, examples, exercises, computer workshops, and assignments, you will think about and work with communication situations that involve the kinds of readers, purposes, and circumstances you will encounter at work. By doing so, this course will begin to prepare you to make practical, effective use of the general principles and techniques you will learn.