For today’s class, you read Chapter 23, Writing Reader-Centered Letters, Memos, E-mails, and Digital Exchanges in Anderson’s Technical Communication. Spend the first ten minutes of class writing a summary of the chapter. Some questions that might help you write your summary include: what is the difference between letters, memos, emails, and digital exchanges? How are these things similar? What purpose might each of these communications serve?

For today’s class, you read Chapter 20: Creating and Delivering Listener-Centered Oral Presentations from Anderson’s Technical Communication. Take the first ten minutes of class to summarize your reading in a comment on this blog post. Remember to use the memo header for these beginning of class writing assignments:

TO:

FROM:

DATE:

RE: (Create your own meaningful subject)

(Your summary)

Use the entire ten minutes for writing to improve your writing ability over time. Think of this as a writing workout. You’re doing repetitions that will pay off over time.

For your first beginning of class writing, I would like you to comment on this post. In your comment, you should first format your message in this manner to practice with the memorandum or memo format:

To: Professor Ellis

From: Your first and last name

Date: Today’s date

Subject: Summary of Anderson’s TC Chapter 1

Write your summary beneath. Your summary should capture what you remember and think is most important to know from the chapter. Some questions to help guide you: What does Anderson say about audience? What three things do readers do when they read something? What six reader-centered strategies does Anderson offer you? Why are ethics important?

What’s most important about your in-class writing is that you put forth the best effort and all of the writing is your own. Put things into your own words unless you want to place something Anderson writes into quotation marks followed by the page number in parentheses like this: Anderson writes, “The fact that readers respond to a communication moment by moment is important to you as a writer” (Anderson 16).

In the time allowed, you might not be able to summarize the entire chapter. Focus on what seems important to you and use the full time for writing. I want this writing to help you improve your writing over time, which means that I will be evaluating these on best effort with attention given to observing change over time.