The primary goal of this class was to develop effective communication in professional and intercultural contexts.  Each work place is its own discourse community, and based on its culture and norms, each employs its own genre(s) usage.  This class provided me with an opportunity to explore the variety of genres that may exist in a professional setting - from writing sensitive messages to persuasive memos to effective emails.  With a group, I was even able to create a policy and procedure manual that could be used by my current employer; this manual was to be used by employees when traveling overseas and conducting business.  With this same group, I was also able to develop a proposal for a range of investors from multiple communities and cultures to consider franchise opportunites in the El Paso/Las Cruces area.  Since I primarily write about literature, some of these genres were completely new to me, and I was at times apprehensive about my ability to convey my message effectively.  I am thankful, though, for being exposed to these new contexts; although I still have much to learn about professional writing, I feel as though I have a solid foundation to begin scaffolding my knowledge.

 

At times, it is easy to get trapped in my world of literature and writing about literature.  However, this class helped me realize that I need to provide opportunities within my classroom to allow students to write in non-literary genres.  Exposing students to work place writing will better prepare them for the real world. Although I cannot anticipate all professional writing contexts, I can at least provide them with general principals that they can later abstract from in the future. 

 

Here are a couple projects I fulfilled in this course: