Memorandum Sample
To: ENGL 3080 Students
From: Dr. McKelvey
Date: April 14, 2021
Subject: Writer’s Journal #4
This memo describes Writer’s Journal #4. This assignment is an opportunity to reflect on This assignment is an opportunity to reflect on your experience with Projects 3 and 4, which asked you to design and follow through with a research project related to your field.
Why are we doing this?
In order to help prepare you for professional writing in a wide range of careers and situations, it is vital that you start making concrete, explicit connections between what you are doing in this course and other types of writing you have done/will possibly do. We need to devote conscious effort to transferring skills and concepts from this course into other contexts somewhere down the line. Research has shown that asking students to reflect (i.e. thinking about why we think/do the things that we think/do) is an effective way to help students make those connections and facilitate transfer. Our goal with this assignment is to take time to pause and reflect on how things are going, where things are heading, and how you're developing as a business writer!
Your Objective
For your fourth reflection, I want you to carefully consider your approach to this research project, particularly in terms of its genesis (how you brainstormed ideas relevant to your field), time-management (how you structured your time on an independent project), and its overall composition (how you developed content and organized it according to business writing conventions).
Questions for Response
- Describe how you navigated the transition from proposing a research project to completing it. How did you approach the feedback you received on your proposal from me and from your peers? Were there any particular comments that helped you define your project (its goals, purpose, target receiver, etc.) more concretely? What was the most challenging part of shifting from writing about a hypothetical research idea to gathering, analyzing, and discussing research? Do you think you learned anything about yourself and your abilities to complete a long-term, independent research project in the workplace? If so, what? If not, why?
- Describe what you think are the strengths and weaknesses of your final report draft. Which of our Core Competencies do you think you did particularly well on? Which do you think you struggled more with? Did you face any particular challenges when you began constructing your final report? How did you overcome them? How do you see the strengths and weaknesses of your final report as related to the three projects you already completed this summer? Can you identify any particular gains you made from a previous project or a lesson you took from an earlier project that helped you with the final report?
Note: You don't have to literally/explicitly answer every single "sub-question" posed here. I am providing multiple angles in order to give you a variety of ways to think about the questions; you can decide which aspects of each question are most relevant to you. The point is that you write something thoughtful about your writing process and about how you’re interpreting the feedback you’ve received so far from me and from your peers.
Guidelines
Your response should be in the form of a memo (including headings) addressed to me, approximately one page long. (To review memo formatting, see pp. 135-140 and pp. 157-159 in our textbook).
Grading
Your score will be based on the thoughtfulness and level of detail of your response. (In other words, something superficial, like "I procrastinated so I didn't end up putting much thought into the process," won't be very successful.) I encourage you to use specific examples (of writing you have done before, of requirements or goals described in our syllabus/prompts, of comments you received on Projects 3 and 4, etc.) to add depth and specificity to your response. As with all of our business writing, the Eight Cs count.
Due Date
Unlike previous writer’s journals, for this one we won’t wait for final feedback on our last project—we’re too close to the end of the semester for that. Instead, I’ve structured this assignment so that you can begin reflecting on your research process even before you receive that final feedback. You have my feedback on Project 3, peer feedback on Projects 3 and 4, and your own experiences working through that research.
So, this final Writer’s Journal will be due on our last official class day: Wednesday, April 21st, by 11:59 p.m.
Grading
Your score will be based on the thoughtfulness and level of detail of your response. (In other words, something superficial, like "I procrastinated so I didn't end up putting much thought into the process," won't be very successful.) I encourage you to use specific examples (of writing you have done before, of requirements or goals described in our syllabus/prompts, of comments you received on Projects 3 and 4, etc.) to add depth and specificity to your response. As with all of our business writing, the Eight Cs count.
Professor’s Name
Course
Date
MEMORANDUM
TO:
FROM:
DATE:
SUBJECT:
I am writing to inform you how I navigated through my research project. Research gaps exist in almost every field, and the need to address some of these main gaps is one of the major factors that inspired me to start my research project. I explored different learning materials and attended lectures to understand what I was planning to embark on vividly. Your feedback and that of my peers played a major role in the execution of this research project. It helped me see areas that I had neglected or given less attention, yet they significantly added more material to the research space. For instance, your comment on the literature review to add more sources made me researc...