Professional Writing Analysis Essay Draft Assignment Final Draft

This assignment, the final draft of the Professional Writing Analysis Essay, differs from the draft of this essay only in that your final essay should be 750 words, minimum. Essays will be penalized for being under word count. Review the rubric for details about essay length and grading.

Overview:

Every career requires writing of some kind. You may not yet be aware of what those kinds of writings are, so learning more about that topic will be one aspect of this assignment. Once you have discovered what kind of writing is required in your field (I’m using profession, career, and field somewhat interchangeably here…you can substitute job as well), choose a piece -or kind of- writing that is long and meaningful enough to be analyzed for the rhetorical characteristics of audience, purpose, and tone. If you are unsure about what kind of writing qualifies, be sure to ask me!

Examples of professional writing that you might work with based on your field include: a patient evaluation, criminal report, technical manual, lesson plan, artists’ statement, event summary, or public relations statement. Do you get the idea?

Once you have a kind of document in mind, you will analyze it using audience, purpose, and tone, providing evidence for your claims from the writing.

Additionally, you will be required to use the grading rubric for the essay to peer review one another, including comments about what is working well with this essay (based on these instructions and the rubric), as well as what needs improvement (again, based clearly on the instructions and rubric).

Purpose:

The purpose of this assignment is to provide you with the opportunity to learn more about writing in your field through research and rhetorical analysis. Another purpose is to provide you with an opportunity to support your ideas with evidence. Finally, another purpose is to provide you with the opportunity to work with one another on the process of writing, and the understand writing as a process.

Skills:

Learn and practice: editing and peer revision, research techniques, the application or rhetorical concepts, composing clear, focused claims, providing appropriate evidence for claims, contextualizing a meaningful analytical essay with an overview, summary, and conclusion

Tasks & Instructions

• Research to learn what kinds of writings you can expect to encounter in your field (future profession, career, job)
• Choose one kind of writing that is substantial enough to analyze using audience, purpose, and tone
• Compose an analytical essay with the following components:
  • An introductory paragraph that informs me about your future/current field, the types of writings you can expect to do in that field, and the kind of writing that you have chose to work with for the assignment. The final sentence of the first paragraph will make a claim about that piece of writing’s audience, purpose, and tone. For example: “After analyzing XX (piece of writing) I believe that the purpose for this writing is XX, the audience is XX, and the tone is XX.
  • Body paragraphs that provide evidence for your claims. Each body paragraph will state its claim and summarize the evidence. For example: The purpose for XX (piece of writing) is XX because XX. Then the paragraph will provide 2 or more pieces of supporting evidence from the writing you are analyzing.
  • A summary and concluding paragraph that does two things: First, the final paragraph will summarize the information that you have provided (this is NOT a direct restatement of the essay’s main claim, it is a summary of the evidence!). Second, you will also add an explanation about what you learned about writing in your field, as well as what you learned about analyzing writing rhetorically. This part will be reflective and personal
  • Submit an essay of at least 750 words. Essays will be penalized as noted in the rubric for being under the word count requirement.
• NOTE: You should follow the formula outlined here for success. I am more interested in your content, so I have laid out the essay’s structure for you to use. You are also welcome to use the first person/”I” throughout the essay.

By completing this assignment you will have worked toward the following module level learning objective:

• Compose a rhetorical analysis essay rough draft and final draft

Rubric

Rhetorical Analysis Essay (1)