Drake English 313                           What This Class Is Really About

The course title, "Business Writing", is a bit misleading, because really this course is designed as much for farmers and teachers and computer programmers as it is for anyone in "business".

This class is actually about learning how to use words to persuade people to help you achieve your goals.  In that sense, it's basically a persuasive writing class, but instead of working on formal, academic-essay-type arguments, we apply traditional persuasive methods to our daily correspondence: how to persuade our spouses, friends, bosses, co-workers, teachers etc etc how to give us the things we need and want.

Or, from another angle, this class applies marketing and advertizing methods to our daily correspondence: how can we get people to "buy into" our ideas and demands?

Our approach will focus on developing ethos and offering readers benefits; that means our method is to use writing to develop positive working relationships with our readers and to make them believe that when they help us they are in fact helping or benefitting themselves. 

Our basic assumptions are, then, that in most all relationships people ultimately make choices based on two things: a) how they feel about the person or people making the request (ethos) and b) a constant, mostly-unconscious cost-benefit analysis of how they will gain or lose from any given action.

Although we'll focus on writing -- this is an English class, after all -- the strategies we'll employ also apply to other types of communication, including, most obviously, speaking.  Writing is, however, a bit different from speech, and so we'll also work to help those of you who already are effective speakers learn how to translate your skills into writing, as well as working on all of us avoiding the common pitfalls inherent to written communication.

The specific documents we will work on include email/memos, letters, resumes, proposals and reports.

Learning outcomes: Toward our larger goal you will study, practice, and develop the skills necessary to organize and present material logically, clearly and concisely; edit your work for maximum accuracy; analyze and meet the needs of specific audiences; and display a commitment to use rhetorical skills in an ethical and professional manner.