ASSIGNMENT:

Goal:  Sum up your accomplishments and any items that you might feel are still “on the table” 

Timeframe:  About 90 minutes or less. 

This is the last reflection on your goals for this course and where you stand in terms of what you’ve accomplished.   Note that, while some people submit it earlier, you are free to send it in right up to our last class date — often writers in need of an extra writing center point take this assignment to the tutor for one last look. 

Take a look at the things you have done this semester, particularly your formal writing assignments. Revisit the learning outcomes for the Professional Writing course, which you can find in your syllabus. 

Write a simple brief journal entry  (no more than a page or so, tops)  that highlights the major writing skills and writing-related knowledge you developed in your Professional Writing course. I am looking for powerful but very concise writing on this one!  

You need not discuss each and everything you learned;  instead, focus on three or four skills that you feel you’ve improved the most from the beginning to the end of the semester, that best demonstrate the type of writer you are or have become by the end of the course, or that you expect to draw on in your future professional or civic lives. 

This is also the space where you can mention anything you would have liked to see, or see more often, in the course, as that helps to plan for the future.  

View Rubric

Reflective Essay Rubric -Updated
Reflective Essay Rubric -Updated
Criteria	Ratings	Pts
Description of experience view longer description	15 pts Outstanding 9 pts Proficient 7 pts Developing	/ 15 pts
Approach to writing challenges view longer description	10 pts Outstanding 6 pts Proficient 5 pts Developing	/ 10 pts
Mechanics and Syntax view longer description	10 pts Outstanding 6 pts Proficient 5 pts Developing	/ 10 pts
Self Analysis view longer description	15 pts Outstanding 13 pts Proficient 7 pts Developing	/ 15 pts
Total Points: 0

Course Description

ENGL394 is a Business Writing course in the Professional Writing Program (Links to an external site.) (PWP) at the University of Maryland, College Park. This Business Writing course aims to harness all of the writing skills you have developed over the years and apply them to the variety of real-world professional fields each of you will soon be entering.  Typically, Business majors make up the largest percentage of each section. Nevertheless, a variety of other majors also choose to take ENGL394 and find the course extremely beneficial to them. As students are able to choose their own topics for the final project, they are able to tailor the course to their own needs and interests. 

Throughout this semester, we will be thinking about our many different audiences–our classmates, our future employers, colleagues, and customers–and how we can most successfully tailor the information these different audiences desire according to the requirements they’ve provided either explicitly or implicitly.  

In addition to further honing our research skills, we will be most interested in how you are able to create documents that provide useful content in whatever style or format that is most appropriate, effective, and persuasive to the intended audience.

How does ENGL394 differ from other writing courses?

Undoubtedly, you have taken a variety of writing and other English classes during high school and college. With this in mind, ENGL394 does not function as an “intro” class focusing on the basics of writing. In particular, ENGL394 is not a grammar class (though we will review some grammar resources, and, by all means, you will work to create polished final documents).

Instead, this class seeks to build on all of your past writing experiences, re-directing the skills you’ve acquired in order to craft document types you might encounter in your post-academic careers. Especially as it concerns the final project, your success in the course will depend on your critical thinking skills, your adaptability, and your willingness to improve over time.

Many students enter ENGL394 and other PWP courses unsure of their writing abilities, either because of performance in past courses, or because they simply haven’t had to write much in recent years. Because many of your majors (or at least your experience thus far in those majors) do not focus as much on the writing process, this uneasiness with taking a writing course is completely understandable. I’m sure you will find that most of your classmates feel the exact same way as you do.

Recognizing this, ENGL394 is designed to allow students a variety of opportunities to tailor the course to their own interests while still achieving all of the same learning outcomes. Like most courses, what you get out of the class will largely depend on what you put into it.

You will also conduct research to solve problems, write proposals, and collaborate to create written documents and oral presentations as one would in a professional workplace. For that reason, you will learn the conventions of organization and style appropriate in professional writing, which means you will have to learn a new style of writing and thinking, one that breaks out of the academic formulae appropriate for other courses. Also, throughout the course, you will learn to work effectively through the writing process to come up with ideas, think critically, write clearly, and (above all) revise and edit in order to produce a polished product.

This course concentrates on three general areas:

1.  
   1. Presenting information clearly, concisely, and effectively to different audiences.
   1. Planning, composing, and editing documents with attention to plain language and standard grammar.
   1. Designing and packaging documents that are understandable and easy to use and that meet project requirements.

By the end of the course, students can expect to be able to

•  
  • analyze a variety of professional rhetorical situations and produce appropriate texts, adapting the text to the knowledge base of the audience;
  • understand and practice the skills needed to produce competent, professional writing including planning, drafting, revising, and editing;
  • identify and implement appropriate research methods for each writing task;
  • practice the ethical use of sources and the conventions of citation appropriate in your field; and
  • improve competence in standard written English (including grammar, sentence and paragraph structure, coherence and document design) and use this knowledge to revise texts.