Paper 1: Writing Needs Analysis for Career “X”
Important Dates:
The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the discipline you’re majoring in, specifically in terms of its communication requirements and guidelines, both for your coursework and for your working environment. What do people studying in your field or working in your field write? What kind of documents or presentations will you have to prepare in college? What types of documents or presentations might be part of the job of someone in your field?
To do this assignment, you might want to ask someone in your field about their experiences. If you don’t know anyone in your field, see if you can schedule an appointment with one of your professors to talk about the expectations in your field. You could, additionally, ask other students who are further along in their college careers to talk to you about their experiences. You could even conduct an interview over the internet, if you’re sure the person you’re interviewing is a reliable source.You might also view some of the videos in CSU’s Engineers on Writing website:
https://writing.colostate.edu/collections/engineering/writers.cfm
Consider some of the following questions:
What kind of writing will you need to do in your job? What types of texts will you be producing? What is the connection between capable writing and advancement?
Will you be expected to do more or less writing as you advance? What are the potential consequences of bad (unclear, inaccurate) writing? Please ask addition questions at your own discretion.
Another thing you’ll want to research and ask your contact about is the variety of audiences people in your field write to and what people in your field read. What are the official types of documents and websites, and who are their audience? Important sources of new information?Unofficial sources? Which blogs do people in your field read? Who should a person in your field follow on Twitter? Who are the “outside” audiences people in your field might need to write to?
Write a short (2-4page) needs analysis of the reading/writing requirements for someone in your field—both in college and afterwards. Don’t feel the need to answer all of the questions above, but you should have considered them all. At the end of your document, provide a self-assessment related to those needs: how are you currently prepared/unprepared for the work you’ve described in the paper?
This assignment is adapted from:
Four effective writing strategies for engineering classes.Sharp, Julie E;Olds, Barbara M;Miller, Ronald L;Dyrud, Marilyn A. Journal of Engineering Education; Jan 1999;