English 420Y - Business Writing Online

My initial concept of this class is greatly changing. I am a firm believer that what you put into something is what you get out of it. I am encouraged to put more than 100% into this class because it has such practical application to my life and career success. My inital question is what is the difference between technical writing and business writing? The glossery words seem more technical as where the reading assignment is more business discussing a resume and job search.

Writing plays a critical role in our everyday life. If writing didn’t exist our means of communication would suffer. After completing the first reading I expect this course to address the different means and ways of communication that are most commonly used in the work place. I find the idea that this class is an online class and based on professional writing very interesting. Professional writing seems to be changing from mailed letters to emails.

Upon completion of this course, I expect to have gained a better knowledge of rhetorical principles and writing practices. I would also like to learn to write memos, letters, reports, and other business documents more effectively. This was an area I have always wanted to improve on. Even though I took ENG 106 and COM 114, I don’t think either of those would have taught me as much as I am bound to learn in this course. Since it’s a senior-level class, I expect to be educated on all of the necessary tools and skills that will make me a well-rounded and qualified candidate for future jobs.

The course reading for the first week was a preface to the basics of business writing. From reading, I have learned that our areas of focus in this course will be writing resumes, memos, cover letters, and other types of reports. Each one of these documents have their own forms of criteria to be contained within it. I expect the course to contain writing documents similar to these. I am familiar with writing texts similar to the ones that are expected in this class for I have done it before both in high school and in my college English class.

After completing this first reading for the class, one thing was apparent to me. I liked that this class focuses on the continued importance of quality writing. It doesn't show us how to find a job (resumes, cover letters, etc.), but it also will teach us how to write once we obtain a job (memos, white pages, etc.). Although some of these topics I have learned through different writing and career focused classes, others are new to me. I expect to be challenged to perfect my resume and learn how to write a quality cover letter.

After reading this section of The Thomson Handbook, I believe the substance of this course is going to be focused on improving our writing form in many formats. In just Chapter 12, we reviewed six different types of business related formats including resumes, cover letters and memos. We also reviewed several formats that many people may not have heard of, or haven’t needed yet, including case analysis and white papers. After reviewing page 223, I already like how the book is able to lay out specific points on creating a cover letter.

After reading the assigned section of the Thomson Handbook, I expect this course to cover material that focuses on two things. First, how to write and format the documents one needs to provide to obtain a job. Second, how to appropriately create business documents for a company once one has received a job. The checklists provided in the reading do a good job describing the general layout of all these documents. Pages 228-229 focused on resumes. The checklist allows any user to follow along and be able to understand the requirements of the resume.

While scanning and reading the required material, I find this book to be very useful in general and not only in the business world. Much of the material in the book, I have already gone over in other english courses, but this particular book goes into much more detail. I believe the substance of this course will be based around the business writing world. Much of the material we cover will help us to write better as whole.

Through reading the textbook, I expect the substance of this course will be about analyzing and writing various documents needed in business worlds such as resume, cover letter, memo, case analysis, and white paper. In more detail, I would expect to practice defining a clear purpose of a document and make the audience understand more clearly and quickly by incorporating various technological resources and thorough analysis.

Let me begin my reading response blog by saying: I expect this course to include all of the basics a college-level professional writing course would. I assume that we will write a resume and cover letter, and learn the basic computer skills necessary to format these documents to standard, as pointed out on pages 229-231 of The Thomson Handbook.