English 420Y - Business Writing Online

Quite frankly, we are hesitant to assign group projects to students. We have bad memories from our undergrad days of doing entire group projects by ourselves, and we are skeptical of the ability of students to work together effectively and equally. The challenges of teamwork are only exacerbated by our distance ed course, where group members may never meet face to face. But group work is a reality of the professional workplace, and you will need to be able to work productively in teams to accomplish complex tasks quickly.

Now that you've written a resume, the next step is to flesh out that information in a cover letter. One of the biggest mistakes people make with the cover letter is just repeating information that can be found on the resume. What's the point of that?

I can see from the responses to the last instructor blog that many of you are now appropriately discouraged. Now I'd like to discuss ways to make you stand out from the crowd. Good application materials can help you score the job you want, or at least give you a fighting chance. The last thing you want to do is send out a mediocre or terrible resume. Without hyperbole, I can say that a resume is one of the most important documents you will ever produce. The irony, of course, is that it will be read in 10-30 seconds, and if you don't make that cut, you get thrown away.

Getting a job sucks. It can be one of the most frustrating and time consuming endeavors you ever undertake. Many people say that getting a job is as difficult and time consuming as having a job. I wish great job searches on all of you throughout your lives (as you'll probably have to undertake many, according to labor statistics), but if you have a rough job search experience, know you're not alone. When you look for a job, you are competing against hundreds, sometimes thousands of other candidates.

Welcome to English 420Y. This is a writing intensive course designed to introduce students from various fields to the principles of professional writing. Professional writing will be defined as the writing used to maintain and support institutions, including businesses, governments, non-profits, and the university itself. The course and its principles are grounded in rhetorical theory that students will be introduced to throughout the semester.