Technical Writing, September 10th, 2013

TODAY

1) Icebreaker2) Just to be fair: my CV3) Workshop Activity 4) Homework

Icebreaker

Another quick Icebreaker: give us your name and tell us your first job.

To Be Fair…

I wanted to show you all my curriculum vitae, or CV. This is what academics make in lieu of a resume.

I’ll display it and talk you through some decisions I made. Feel free to critique.

Today

I’m going to give you most of today to conduct your peer workshops. My reason for this is that I want you to do this workshop in stages, and those stages will take time to do correctly.

To start, form groups of four.

Step 1

The first thing you need to do is, one by one, go around your group and share your job ad/explain why you chose it.

Make sure to explain the ad in such a way that your group members can totally understand what’s going on.

Step 2

Circulate your cover letters. Give everyone time to read all three and jot down responses to the questions on the following slide. It might be best to send these as an email to the author, but you may share however you’d like.As you pass around, please also ask one question of your own.

Questions

1. Does the letter adhere to the standards of technical writing that we’ve discussed so far?

2. Is the letter’s tone consistent with the job ad?3. Does the author do a solid job of selling himself/herself

to the employer?4. What do you want to hear more of? 5. What doesn’t work? 6. Also, answer the author’s question

Now…

…take some time to share comments and discuss.

Step 3

Now circulate resumes.As you read over your group members’ resumes, answer the following questions:1.How is the visual design? Does it all work well?2.How is the arrangement? Is the order of things sound?3.How’s the content? 4.What might you want to see that isn’t here? 5.What might the author consider excluding?

Again, take time to share

As you look at the comments you’ve been offered, please ask questions of your group members.

Remember that…

… the final versions of these are due on September 19th.

Next class, we will start to talk about the next major assignment, the instructions assignment.

HomeworkRead: “What Font Should I Use?”: Five Principles for Choosing and Using Typefaces

See you then!