This course will emphasize learning through doing. Working individually, in pairs and in groups, students involve themselves in a variety of classroom activities (collaborating on assignments and exercises, revising and editing) and discussion during lectures. These activities will enable them to develop familiarity with and proficiency in client-centred report production.
1. Reports: Theory and Practice
The student will
- examine the genre of reports
- examine the rhetorical situation in this specialized writing task
- develop awareness of the stages of client-centred report production:
- initial contact
- proposals
- progress reports
- client-centred outlines
- reader-based reports
- develop awareness of the sub-textual level of report production:
- social and cultural context (organizational culture)
- inter-personal protocols
- rhetorical strategies
2. Time Management
The student will:
- develop an action plan
- structure activities to satisfy short and long term priorities
- establish a system for organizing workload
- meet production deadlines
3. Research Process
The student will:
clearly establish audience, purpose, context
- clearly establish audience, purpose, context
- identify major, minor, and irrelevant issues (scope)
- determine appropriate data base
- analyze appropriateness of data sources
- develop surveys, questionnaires, interview questions
- practise interviewing skills
- utilize appropriate secondary data sources:
- reference texts,
- libraries,
- grey literature,
- market research
- manage information in an ethical manner
- produce applicable related documents as necessary:
- letters,
- memos,
- short reports
- produce an organizational culture analysis (essay)
4. Document Production
The student will:
- collect and organize source material in terms of issues
- prepare a client-centred report outline
- produce a proposal
- produce a progress report
- produce a coherent, reader-based report which fulfills its purpose
- produce an accompanying abstract (executive summary)
- make use of coherence and persuasive strategies as required
- revise the report for appropriateness of tone, structure, and content in relation to audience and purpose.
5. Discourse Theory and Grammar: exercises from Vande Kopple.
Students will practise the researched report-writing tasks, and will apply the skills they were introduced to in the 100-level prerequisite courses: research skills and workplace writing strategies. Students will also take responsibility for working independently through a complex, multi-faceted field-based research project requiring focus, organization and self-motivation.
Evaluation will be based on this general outline:
| Proposal | 15% |
| Report Genre Analysis | 10% |
| Empirical Research Progress Report | 15% |
| Theoretical Research Progress Report | 10% |
| Organizational Culture Analysis | 10% |
| Research Report | 30% |
| Peer Review of Formal Report | 10% |
| 100% |
Textbooks and Materials to be Purchased by Students
Anderson, Paul. Technical Writing: A Reader-Centred Approach. 2nd ed. Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich College Publishers, 1998.
Vande Kopple, William. Clear and Coherent Prose. Scott, Foresman and Company, 1989.
Research Reporting Readings (Course Ware Package).