Technical Communication in my Major Memo

Purpose of the assignment:

• To understand and succesfully practice the conventions of writing a memo: Subject, Purpose, Main Point, Background Information, Importance of Subject/Block Paragraphs/Chunking Information
• To develop a professional writing style
• To get you acquainted with specific technical communication in your field
• To get a sense of writing/research conventions used in your major/or profession
• To successfully communicate all this in memo-format

Assignment:

1.Find a practitioner or professor that works in the field of your major and interview them.

• You'll want to find a professional practitioner or professor in your major as soon as possible, and contact them in order to schedule a time for an interview. Usually these people are fairly busy, and seeing as they take time out of their busy schedule, make sure to show up on time and write a thank you letter after the interview.
  
  
• During the Interview, ask the person about the types of professional writing that goes on in their specific capacity. Ask about the writing conventions in their field in general: What writing practices are employed in the profession/field? What counts as evidence? What rhetorical strategies are used to convince people of evidence? What specific research methodologies are generally employed and accepted in your field (i.e. how do people do research and report on their findings)? Also ask any other questions that you want to know about the communication that you might have to do if you decide to go into the field. Finally, ask them if they can recommend a specific journal that is used in their field (as opposed to a book/magazine- which are off-limits for this assignment).
  
  
• The purpose of the interview is for you to get a better idea of the type(s) of technical communication performed in your career. Moreover, it is also important that you can explain the information given to you in a clear manner in your memo. For this reason, it is okay to paraphrase the information gathered from the interview in your memo.You'll also want to get your interviewee's name and title and mention them in your memo.

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2. During the interview, ask for a specific journal that is used in your major by professionals and analyze a particular journal article for visual and rhetorical conventions.

• Do research in the library and locate a copy of the journal in the bound section or the new issues section of the library. Locate an up-to-date copy of your journal in the library or in an online database (if online, make sure the original version is presented, graphics and formatting included). Do not use a website as these generally do not have the same standards as journals regarding information.
• If you are having difficulties locating a journal, or want to did not get a good recommendation from your interview subject, ask the reference librarian for a good journal in that field. For most accurate and up-to-date representation of the type of writing in your major, make sure that you have a recent issue of the journal (not older than 5 years ago).

Analyze the journal as a whole

You'll want to take a look at what's covered in the journal, to get a better sense of what the journal deals with. Every journal deals with a variety of subjects, and has a variety of functions. Try to discover what these are in the particular journal you've chosen, by asking yourself the following questions:

• Scope – what is the particular scope of the journal (i.e. what does it cover?)
• Purpose – what is the particular purpose of the journal (i.e. what niche does it fill in the profession in terms of subject matter?)
• Content of the journal as whole (i.e. what other subjects are discussed in the journal?)
  
  

Next, you'll want to choose an article in the journal that you find particularly exemplary of the type(s) of technical communication that take place in your field

Analyze a particular article in the journal

• Who is the intended audience of this article?
• What writing style does it use? (plain or persuasive; filled with specialized language or not);
• What visual format does the article use? (For example, page design, visual aids, etc.)
• What textual format does the article (Does each article follow a particular format? If so, what?)
• Also make sure to connect this article to how it reflects technical communication in your field

In your memo, you'll want to mention the journal's name, the issue and volume number, year, as well as the article title and author(s), so write these down.

Note: Instead of writing about whether or not you liked the article, agree with its main points, I want you to focus on the way(s) the information is communicated to you. It's okay to give a quick summary (1-2 sentences) of what the article is about, but keep the focus on how, rather than what, it is trying to communicate.

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3. Photocopy 2 pages of the specific article that you find exemplary of the way information is communicated in your field and include these pages when you hand in your final memo.

4. Write up your findings in a 2 page single-spaced memo.

• Obviously, you’ll want to organize your information in logical way so that it is easy for me to understand. Seeing as you have only 2 pages, you'll want to "chunk" your information in a way that makes the memo easy to read and understand. After gathering your information from the interview and the journal, this means that you'll have to spend some time on how you want to convey this information to me. Memos are meant to convey highly complex information quickly in an easy-to-read format for the reader, so you'll want to focus on how to get the information ordered in a way that makes sense.

Grading Criteria:

Format: use a memo format - click on the link here for specifications.
I will be specifically looking at the following elements:

1. Have you organized information in your memo in a usable and clear manner?

2. Does your memo adhere to formatting conventions of a memo as well as the length requirements for this particular assignment?

3. Does your memo "chunk" the information gathered through your field research (i.e. doing the interview, doing library research, analyzing the journal) in a way that gives a good overview of the writing and research practices done in your field?

4. Does your memo make connections between the interview and the journal analysis?

5. Does your memo convey the types of writing/reseach practices performed in your field, as well as which visual, textual and rhetorical conventions are used in your field?

6. Does your memo look professional (no typos, spelling, grammar errors?)


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