Reference no: EM132363579 , Length: word count : 1000

Assignment : Analysis of Work Document

Task: Locate, analyse and evaluate a piece of professional writing.

Purpose: “To understand the conventions, writers need excellent briefing and excellent exemplars to imitate, or, better still, to emulate. They need to be able to identify errors that characterize non-standard English. They need to be able to identify rectifiable weaknesses. They need to know how to read for substance and subtext.

They need to be able to discern perspectives, inaccuracies, biases, gaps, and blind spots. They need to be able to analyse, evaluate, and select information, and structure and synthesise it into logical, meaningful, economical, persuasive prose of their own.” – Roslyn Petelin, How Writing Works, p. 3.

Process: Select a piece of professional writing, either online or print, for this analysis.

The document should be from a real professional writing situation / industry and related to your future career goals. Refer to Week 1 slides for a complete list of possible documents.

Note: If the document is not in the public domain, please change the identifying information (names, companies, products) to ensure confidentiality.

Compose a detailed analysis of the document’s features and effectiveness. You need to:

1) analyse the document rhetorically (audience, purpose, context, subject, structure, style)

2) evaluate the document’s effectiveness according to the conventions for that text

You might rely on the assessment criteria in Roslyn Petelin’s How Writing Works, chapter 1 & 8 (assigned for week two and available through Canvas links to the library’s eBook copy).

Structure: After you have generated a list of analysis points, plan and design your text for submission. Develop an appropriate and effective structure, with a professional writing audience in mind. You can imagine you are submitting the analysis to a future boss or organisation. You might set up the analysis in the form of a letter, or a report attached to an email. Let us know your target audience for this analysis/evaluation.

Document design: Emulate the best qualities of professional writing in your own text. You might use headers, font such as bold and italics, dot-points, indentations, and more.

Organise your analysis and evaluation in a way that makes most logical sense for your text, your audience, and your purpose. This way, you learn ‘on the job’ how to produce professional writing.

Objectives: This task enables you to fulfill the following learning outcomes of the unit and to develop the graduate qualities listed below:

You will apply and develop disciplinary expertise by selecting, analyzing and evaluating a professional document.

• You will develop skills in critical thinking through analysis and evaluation; you will use information/digital literacy by investigating evaluation criteria and applying it to your document in an effective and creative way; you learn how to respond to novel problems by completing the assignment successfully.

• You will develop inventiveness by selecting a document, generating your unique analysis, structuring your content in a purposeful, effective format, and writing with appropriate style for your chosen audience.

Getting started: You might use the questions Adam generated in order to generate points you will incorporate into the analysis and evaluation of professional writing. Note that you do not need to address all the questions, and you do need to demonstrate information
literacy by also relying on the evaluation criteria in How Writing Works or another text. Rhetorical analysis of a sample ‘work document’

General questions

• What genre of document is this? Is the document type suited to the rhetorical situation or context in which it is presented? What are its basic features e.g. subject matter, structure, style?

• What is the purpose of the document? Is an action supposed to result from the document? Is it trying to persuade the reader of something?

• Who are the readers or potential readers of the document?

Textual questions

• How well does the document conform to the conventions of its genre?

• Does the document take an appropriate tone for its type/genre?

• Is it stylistically appropriate? (e.g. does it use non-technical language for a non-specialist audience? Is it grammatically correct? Concise?)

• How is the document structured? Does the structure address the rhetorical situation or audience expectations?

• What rhetorical appeals are made and how effectively are they executed?

• How are visual or design elements used in the document? Are they effective?

• Are there images, graphs, charts or other figures and do these support the argument or purpose of the textual content?

Audience questions

• Who is the primary audience for the document? (To whom is it addressed? Who is supposed to act on it?)

• What other audiences could the document have?

• What is the relationship between the document’s authors and its readers?

• What role or position does the reader occupy?

• What level of familiarity will the reader have with the subject matter? Do they have technical, general or no prior knowledge?

• What attitude will readers have towards the subject matter?

• What questions might they bring?

• What social (gender, class, race, ability etc.) or cultural (norms, institutional or professional languages, expectations, ‘how we do things around here’) factors might affect an audience’s reception of the document?

Purpose or outcome questions

• What is the primary purpose of the document? Are there other purposes?

• What reason might a reader have for reading this document? What does a reader need to know or do when they pick up or open the document?

• How will the document be read? (Thoroughly, beginning to end? Skimmed? Used for reference? Socially, over coffee? In a reading group? By scandalised citizens?)

• How will readers use the information in the document?

• What change does the document’s author seek to produce?