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University of Florida
GEB 4930 ~ Professional Writing in Business ~ Spring 2005
Section 0825 – Wed & Fri Period 9 (4:00-4:55pm) – MAT 7
LECTURE ~ Thurs Period 10 ~ BRY 130

Instructor: Ms. Angelique Nixon || Office: Bryan Hall Room #125D
E-mail: angelnix@ufl.edu || Office Hours: Wed 3 to 4pm
Phone No: (352) 392-8436 x 1320 & by appointment

In business, where communication needs to be as clear as it is convincing, mastering the principles of effective, efficient writing is essential. GEB 4930 – Professional Writing in Business is designed to teach business students the fundamental written communication skills that will allow them to express their ideas effectively and efficiently, preparing them for the demands of the business workplace. This course focuses on three areas central to professional writing in business: knowledge of the types of writing central to business communication, mastery of the techniques for persuasive argumentation, and understanding of the fundamentals of writing clearly, specifically, and concisely.

The project-based writing assignments in this course ensure that students learn professional communication principles within different organizational contexts, as they work on assignments, cases, and projects drawn from everyday business situations. The course emphasizes both internal and external communication, as well as how to select style, formats, and approaches appropriately according to context and audience. Assignments include e-mails, memos, letters, resumes, and individual as well as team-written reports.

Students attend one live lecture per week on the fundamentals of business writing and stylistic principles.

Lectures are held in Bryan 130 on Thursdays during period 10.
Graduate Teaching Assistants teach two writing-intensive workshops each week on effective writing principles and strategies. During workshops, students discuss assigned readings, complete in-class writing and other exercises, critique sample documents and peers’ writing, and make presentations.

Course Texts
James Porter, Patricia Sullivan, Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Professional Writing Online 2.0, 2nd edition. Longman, 2004.
James Porter, Patricia Sullivan, Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Professional Writing Online Course Manual. Longman Pearson, 2004.
Jane Douglas, College Writing CPR: 16 Principles for Writing Virtually Anything Effectively. Longman Pearson, 2004.
Christine Holt, Thomas Huckin, The New Century Handbook. 2nd edition. Longman, 2002.

Recognizing that professional workplace writing increasingly takes place online, we have selected as our primary resource an online text, Professional Writing Online, which offers a variety of real-world scenarios and opportunities for individual and team-based writing activities. College Writing CPR uses new research into neuroscience, cognition, and linguistics to provide writers with the essential stylistic tools for mastering clear, efficient, and highly effective writing. Finally, The New Century Handbook is a concise reference text that students use as a resource for learning and reviewing grammar, punctuation, and usage principles necessary for clear, correct writing.

Course Assignments
Students will analyze real-world scenarios to determine how and why a document serves its purpose in the workplace, discover the role of document design in information processing, and learn how to respond efficiently to clients’ and colleagues’ needs. The assignments, geared to both general and specialist audiences, provide practice in such essential career skills as problem solving, time management, and oral presentations.

Students will complete multiple drafts of the following writing assignments:
resume and cover letter
plagiarism policy
proposal memo
progress report
sexual harassment policy rewrite and memo
team report
Power Point presentation
final assessment memo

Guidelines for Written Assignments
All assignments must use MLA style. All disciplines at the university use a particular style manual. (If you want to use a different style, we can discuss this.)
All assignments must be typed. The ink must be black, and the paper must be white. All assignments must have one-inch margins on all four sides, and must be stapled.
All assignments must be proofread for technical/grammatical correctness.
Always save your writing through e-mail, floppy disc, and/or hard drive.

Course Objectives – By the end of this course, students will know how to:
Structure sentences, paragraphs, and documents for maximum impact
Better comprehend their professional roles and the communication tools needed in the business world
Gear their writing towards a number of audiences, both internal and external to the workplace
Assess how a variety of written communication styles affect the audience’s reception of ideas
Deploy useful strategies for writing essential workplace documents like memos, instructions, and reports
Write collaboratively with teammates to produce a coherent and professional report
Write and revise for optimal concision and clarity.
Attendance and Participation

Students are expected to attend all lectures and writing workshops because success in this course depends on intensive, continuous, and supervised writing practice. Writing is a skill, which means that the more you practice writing with guidance, the more your skills will improve. Because of the incremental and cumulative effect of GEB 4930, if a student misses 6 workshop sessions (for any reason), the student will be assigned a grade of E (failure) for the course. In addition, quizzes, in-class writing, group work, peer review and other in-class activities can not be made up.

Students are responsible for getting assignments in on their due dates. Papers are due at the beginning of class on the assigned date, and students must complete ALL assignments to pass the course. Students should complete readings and assignments included in the syllabus by the class following the assignment, unless otherwise indicated. Even with an excused absence, students should make every attempt to turn assignments in on time.

Academic Honesty
As a University of Florida student, your performance is governed by the UF Honor Code, available in its full form at http://www.reg.ufl.edu/01-02-catalog/student_life/. The Honor Code requires Florida students to neither give nor receive unauthorized aid in completing all assignments. Violations include cheating, plagiarism, bribery, and misrepresentation, all defined in detail at http://www.dso.ufl.edu/judicial/honestybrochure.htm. Plagiarism is the presentation of the words or ideas of another as one's own. You would commit plagiarism by using, without crediting the source:
1.Any part of another person's essay, speech, or ideas (even if paraphrased or expressed in your own words);
2.Any part of an article in a magazine, journal, newspaper, or any part of a book, encyclopedia, CD, online internet page, etc.

Students with Physical Disabilities
The University of Florida complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Students requesting classroom accommodation must first register with the Dean of Students Office. The Dean of Students Office will provide documentation to the student who must then provide this documentation to the Instructor when requesting accommodation.

General Education Learning Outcomes
GEB 4930 satisfies General Education requirements for both Composition (C) and Gordon Rule-Communication (E6). As a result, to fulfill the Composition requirement, GEB 4930 offers instruction in how to write with maximum clarity, organization, and efficiency, as well as how to adapt writing to the demands of a variety of genres, contexts, and audiences. To satisfy the E6 Gordon Rule requirement, GEB 4930 also requires students to complete at least 6,000 words of evaluated writing during the semester.

Students are required to attend the lectures and the discussions. Weekly quizzes will be assigned during the discussion periods based on the Lecture from the previous week. You are responsible for all materials and work in both discussions and lectures.

Unless prefaced with CPR, course reading assignments refer to the PWO Handbook.
This is subject to change to reflect the needs of the class.

DISCUSSION 1– Course introduction: syllabus, assignments, Course Compass.
DISCUSSION 2 – Diagnostic memo.
HW – Sign up on Course Compass. Read Chapters 1 and 2: Purposes of Professional Writing, and Principles of Reading
LECTURE 1 – Introduction to Business Writing

DISCUSSION 1 – What is good business writing?
DISCUSSION 2 - Achieving action-oriented writing.
HW – Revise bad business document to hand in.
LECTURE 2 – Writing for Purpose and Audience: producing an effective Resume

DISCUSSION 1 – Resume analysis and discussion
DISCUSSION 2 – Peer review resumes
HW – Assignment: Finalize resumes. Read Chapter 13: Career Documents (pp. 89-95).
LECTURE 3 – Business Letters: producing the Cover Letter

DISCUSSION 1 – Cover Letter analysis and discussion
DISCUSSION 2 – Peer review cover letters
HW – Assignment: Finalize cover letters. Read Chapter 3: Issues of Style & Audience (pp.1-21).
LECTURE 4 – Writing for your Reader: direct and indirect approaches

Week 5: 31 January-4 February

DISCUSSION 1 – Frontloading your message and writing for the reader’s needs.
DISCUSSION 2 – Writing bad news letters tactfully.
HW – Assignment: Allied Mutual Insurance Case- Rewrite policy termination letter. Read CPR: Concision: Chapter 5: pp. 57-68.
LECTURE 5 – Writing effective e-mails and concision.

DISCUSSION 1 – E-mail management
DISCUSSION 2 – Team project introduction and discussion
HW - Assignment: Select group project. Read CPR: Importance of Writing and Clarity: Chapters 1 & 2: pp. 1-19
LECTURE 6 - Fundamentals of Writing CPR and Clarity

DISCUSSION 1 – Achieving a clear style
DISCUSSION 2 – Library research workshop
HW - Start group project research and set up timeline. Read Chapter 7: Information and Research Management (pp. 39-49), and Chapter 4: Ethics in Professional Communication (pp. 23-27)
LECTURE 7 – Ethics in Professional Communication

DISCUSSION 1 – Role of ethics in business and academia. Plagiarism guidelines.
DISCUSSION 2 – Collaborative Writing and team project planning
HW - Assignment: Plain-Language Plagiarism handout. Read Chapter 6: Communicating with Visuals (pp. 37-38)
LECTURE 8 – Document Design and Effective Use of graphics

DISCUSSION 1 – Incorporating visuals in your writing
DISCUSSION 2 – Team meeting and document design and organization.
HW – Assignment: National Electric Simulation – memo and table/visual. Read Chapter 8: Building Arguments (pp. 51-60).
.LECTURE 9 – Persuasive writing and writing effective reports

DISCUSSION 1 – Persuasive writing techniques and report writing.
DISCUSSION 2 – Sample report analysis
HW – Read Chapter 11: Writing Reports (pp. 73-82). Read CPR Chapters 3 (pp. 21-38) and 4: pp. 39-55.
LECTURE 10 – Organization: Continuity and Coherence

Week 12: 28 March – 1 April

DISCUSSION 1 – Effective organization in long documents
DISCUSSION 2 – Team meeting.
HW – Assignment: United Drill Simulation – extended memo. Read: Chapter 12: The Writing Process – Revising, Editing, and Proofreading (pp. 83-88) and Chapter 9: Writing Collaboratively (pp. 61-68)..
LECTURE 11 – The Writing Process: Revising, Editing, and Proofreading.

DISCUSSION 1 – Negotiating the writing process. In-class Assignment: Style and Editing: Correcting Style Problems, Style and Editing Activity, and Professional Look and Feel.
DISCUSSION 2 - review reports in class.
HW – Read Chapter 10: Making Successful Presentations (pp. 69-72).
LECTURE 12 – Making successful presentations

DISCUSSION 1 – Oral presentations
DISCUSSION 2 – Oral presentations. Team Reports DUE.
HW – Read CPR Chapter 6 (pp. 69-76)
LECTURE 13 – Professional Writing for your Career

DISCUSSION 1 – Oral presentations.
DISCUSSION 2 – Final assessment memo. Evaluation of oral presentations.

ASSIGNMENT 1 – Resume, cover letter (100)
ASSIGNMENT 2 - Allied Mutual Insurance Case: Rewrite policy termination letter (50)
ASSIGNMENT 3 – Plain Language Plagiarism: One-page plagiarism handout (50)
ASSIGNMENT 4 – National Electric Simulation: Memo with table/visual (100)
ASSIGNMENT 5 –

Team Report : Preparatory Documents (100)
Individual Section (100)
Team Grade (100)

ASSIGNMENT 6 – United Drill Simulation: One memo (sexual harassment policy) (150)
ASSIGNMENT 7 – Team Oral Presentation with Power Point (100)