Pay careful attention to the guidelines for this assignment. There are generally three sticky points to be careful of: 1) content, 2) audience, 3) purpose. The content of this assignment is specified on the assignment: Request for Proposals (RFP). Be sure to address each section thoroughly. Note that there are very specific content and organization requirements for this assignment. You must provide what it asks in the order in which it is required. This is not uncommon in professional writing situations. Note that the Proposed Report section requires you to discuss the meeting of course requirements (refer to the syllabus). The Audience section refers to describing the audience for your REPORT. The outline of your Report’s draft is a starting point (Don’t be too worried about this yet. It will change). You’ll want to refer to the Final Report Structure attached to the Final Report DB, and the sample reports in Course Docs to help you set up the outline. I’ll be posting these ASAP. Conclude the proposal convincingly. The Audience analysis is one of the most critical. You cannot effectively gear the final report toward that audience if you do not know their limits, knowledge, attitude, and involvement/investment in the project you present. Knowing where they stand in these terms is crucial to your ability to rhetorically persuade them that what you have presented is the best solution to a legitimate concern that they NEED to address in this way. To know them is to be able to control them. I’ve attached a worksheet here that you can use informally to help you think about your audience. Purpose: Your purpose here is to convince me and your peers (your audience for this assignment, the Proposal, not to be confused with the Audience you are analyzing IN the assignment to whom your final report will be addressed) that you are on track for the report, have a strong and feasible project, are prepared and able to continue, and that the future work you do will be worthwhile. Being convincing is a matter of writing persuasively. How? First, know your audience, me and your peers (for the proposal). What sort of style and content do you think matters to us? What can you say, and how that would make ME believe I should let you continue the project and not give you a red tag on your locker? Consider these Aristotelian elements of persuasion that have endured for thousands of years: LOGOS- the logical appeal, using reason and evidence to make an argument make sense to your reader (Here goes the audience thing again). IF it doesn’t make sense to them, it doesn’t make sense. ETHOS- The ethical appeal, not an appeal to morality, but an effort to show that you are of strong ethic as the writer. Show your integrity by illustrating your awareness of the conventions (what your reader expects), that your thinking is aligned with the thinking of other experts in your field. If you say what proven people say, then you are also credible, by association. Morality, for Aristotle, was a given, especially since the power to persuade could be such a dangerous thing. Just consider Hitler! PATHOS-the pathetic appeal, does not imply that you be pathetic, but that you appeal to the emotions of your audience. This can be the most powerful and dangerous (for the writer) of the three. Overdoing it (false flattery, sob stories, etc.) leads to a loss of your credibility because your audience might assume your just pulling their strings. The proper appeal will not get them crying, but create empathy; they will believe that you believe in your cause, and that it is a worthwhile one. There is a lot at stake on this assignment, so take it seriously and work carefully. This assignment more than any other directly impacts the writing of your final recommendation report. Some of the sections of this proposal (like the proposed report and Problem Statement) might be copied and pasted right into early sections of the report itself as a way to set up the document. So better writing here leads to less writing later. Even more importantly, it is the primary prep work for the report in terms of understanding your report’s audience, the context of the situation you are working on, and how you need to present information that will be persuasive. Finally, I hope you’ve been researching. It would be difficult if not impossible to write a good proposal without first being well informed by professionals.