Memo

To: Jason Charnesky From: Stephen Cantwell Date: December 11th, 2011 Re: E Portfolio English 202C

The purpose of English 202C was to learn real world writing skills that would help us in the long run. The main writing aspects that were worked on were clarity, brevity, precision and accuracy, and transparency. These concepts were reinforced through numerous smaller assignments and several major assignments. These major assignments were; a basic rhetorical analysis, an internet resource guide, a job application package, a technical definition and description, and an instruction set.

In the basic rhetorical analysis we were introduced to the basic elements of technical communication. I analyzed a document based on who the audience was and what the document was intended for in all aspects of the document. The internet resource guide was intended to get us to become familiar with online communication resources specific to our field of study. In my case, I did a guide on how to choose a civil engineering option. In this guide I had to make decisions about organization, format, and style as a means of creating a usable document for readers. The job application package consisted of two sets of a cover letter and a resume specific to certain jobs as well as a descriptive memo which explained the decisions made. This assignment helped me to properly format my resume and cover letter so that it is tailor made for a certain type of job. The technical definition and description was meant to analyze and properly describe something technically so that a specific audience can understand. I did a technical description on how earbuds work. The final assignment was an instruction set which was intended to provide a document that would be clear enough to have someone finish the task. I wrote an instruction set on how to jump start a car. I believe this course will be very beneficial to my career. As a civil engineer or even as an engineer in general I will need to use many of the skills learned in class in everyday tasks. Specifically, how to write a memo will be very useful in communicating with other engineers, my managers, and other people working on common projects. I also believe that the main skills reinforced throughout the year will be really helpful. Out of those skills I think that my clarity and brevity have gotten better and I can get my point across better than before. This class has also helped me to not back engineer certain sentences but to simply keep the meaning of the sentence and just rewrite it. I chose to revision two of the documents I have done throughout the year: the internet resource guide and the job application package. The internet resource guide needed to be more clear in certain aspects. I believe that my revision will help the reader to understand the
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purpose of some of my decisions. I also needed to make several grammatically corrections so that my writing is more transparent. There were only a few mistakes grammatically but the major thing I needed to fix was the capitulation. The job application package also needed to be clearer. Specifically the cover letters needed to have more brevity and clarity. The paragraph about my extra-curriculars needed to be more specific to the job applied for. The resume format also needed to be a little bit more organized so that certain aspects of my resume stick out more than everything else.