Letter Assignment

The overall goal of this assignment is to introduce you to the issues/concerns you need to consider when writing a variety of business letters/memos. You will hand in eight documents

• Letter of complaint--to Grube or to a company with whom you have a complaint
• Pretend to be Grube (or the company representative) and respond to your letter
• Memo about a new hire
• Memo about a policy change
• Audience analysis I--rhetorical situation for the policy change memo.
• Resume
• Cover letter
• Audience analysis II--assessing your cover letter/resume decisions based on the job ad.

Letter of complaint

As a student at Georgia Southern, I'm sure you've had moments when you thought that something here could be improved. Pretend for this letter, that you've decided to write President Grube with ONE of your concerns. For example, you may have a strong opinion about parking, but also a very unique solution that you would like to propose to the President. Or perhaps you have concerns regarding the availability of healthy food on this campus. Try to present a problem and the solution you would like him to consider. Try to give him a clear request for action, one that is feasible. If you don't have any desire to write such a letter, you can write a complaint letter to a company of your choice. Whatever you choose, before you craft your argument, think about your audience and how they will see the same situation. In addition, look up the conventional arrangement that people follow when they write letters of complaint.

Response to letter of complaint

Pretend to be the person receiving your letter of complaint above, and respond to it. If you're pretending to be President Grube, gather a sense of how he writes (look at his welcoming messages on-line). You need to decide whether you can write a good news or a bad news letter (or?). Whatever you decide, make sure that you're aware of the conventional arrangement of material that business writers typically follow.

Memo regarding a new hire

Pretend that you are a company manager, and you along with several of the company's employees have recently gone through a rather complicated search for a new hire. The people on the committee worked long hours in order to make a good decision about who to hire but experienced difficulties deciding on the hire because many candidates were qualified, and because the people who would work for the new hire had differences of opinion on who would be the ideal boss. Your job is to write the memo to the company announcing the new hire (indicating some of his or her qualifications), and thanking the committee for its hard work. As you write this memo, consider the multiple audiences who will read your announcement: (1) the committee members (2) people who hold opinions about who should have been hired (3) people who won't know anything about the hire (in other departments, locations, etc), (4) your superiors (5) the person you hire! You're expected to introduce the new hire and thank the committee; how you address the other issues is up to you. You need to strike the right tone.

Memo about a policy change

Pretend you're a middle manager, and you have just come from a meeting with your boss. In that meeting, your boss informed you that you need to assign more work to people who are full-time, non-hourly employees. While you argued vehemently with your boss because you know that your employees already work more than forty hours a week as it is, you couldn't change your boss's mind. You need to send a memo to that group of people whose workload will be affected, indicating that you will be assigning them two additional tasks in the next two weeks. (Note that you work in a department that handles the writing for the company, so you anticipate that each of these people will need to write additional documents. They will have to take on two or three additional writing assignments each week, but you'll have to wait for your boss to inform you of the actual assignments in the coming weeks.)

This is not a memo you want to write because you're stuck between two very different kinds of audiences--your boss, and the people who will be affected the most. In addition, you know that more people than just these two primary audiences will likely see your memo.

At your office, you're known for having been able to turn around your department's morale, and now you're one of the most productive units. You've been able to do this because you're able to come up with solutions to problems, and to institute new policies, or new ways of doing things so that the people who work for you don't feel exhausted and overworked. As you think about this situation, your first response is to sit down and brainstorm ways to institute this requirement that won't hurt your employees. You think of possible various staffing solutions, incentives, rewards, and once you've come up with a plan, you write your employees, informing them of the challenges, and your strategies for addressng the problem.

While you'd really like to gripe to your employees, you know that your memo could be read by your boss.

Audience Analysis I

Once you're done writing the above memo, I want you to pretend that you're explaining to someone else why you made the decisions you made in the memo. Each word you put down on the page is a decision, and each sentence, each part of the memo is a decision. Why did you arrange it the way you did? Why did you use the language you did? Were you particularly careful with language in one area? Why? Look at all your decisions, and then turn to the audience analysis worksheet to see if it gives you more of an awareness of the decisions you made (without being so conscious of them), and then, once you've gathered all this data, decide on the patterns that you see--and the most important things to convey to me so that I see why you chose the moves that you did in the memo. Write a memo to me, one that explains to me why you did what you did. Make sure that you follow strategies for this memo that you use in the other ones.

Resume and Cover Letter

For this part of the letter assignment, you first need to find a job ad that is appropriate to your current job possibilities. If you are a senior, and are graduating this year, find a job ad that you could apply for once you graduate. If you are not a senior, look for internship possibilities for next summer, or for a job that will help you gather the right kind of experiences for your career objectives. (In other words, I don't want you to find a job ad for a grocery checker, or a job you could do before you were in college.)

Write a cover letter that is specific to the job ad you found. In addition, write the resume keeping in mind the job ad. Tailor your resume to the job ad. Consult the information below on resume and cover letters.

link to Specific Information on Resumes / Cover Letters

Audience Analysis II

Similarly to the first audience analysis, I want to know why you did what you did in the Resume/cover letter. Why did you emphasize education above experience, for example. Why did you focus on your achievements in yoru courses. What decisions did you make about arrangement that were based on the job ad. Then, fill out the audience analysis worksheet to see if it prompts you to think of other decisions you made, and then write the memo that summarizes your decisions you made when shaping the focus for the cover letter and resume, referencing your rhetorical analysis worksheet. Hand in both the memo and the worksheet.