This foundational workshop introduces students to the field of professional communication–and its often complicated requirements–with an emphasis on “learning how to learn” new forms of writing. Participants will learn to focus first on audience and purpose, and discussions will emphasize clarity and concision. They will be introduced to a variety of common workplace writing genres and be asked to consider various professional writing contexts within corporate, nonprofit and government settings, as they learn to situate their own current and future work within typical workplace parameters. The workshop will contemplate what makes “good” workplace writing, from tone to structure to visual readability.

Participants will be asked to evaluate their writing process and will gain techniques and tools to develop more effective practices in planning, including pre-writing and outlining; gathering feedback; revising; editing; and proofreading. Finally, the workshop offers strategies for adapting an “ideal” writing process to a realistic one in inevitable times of extremely limited turnaround. 

This workshop is ideal for groups of professionals who are relatively new to the organization or to the professional world in general, as well as multilingual writers, or those who could use a refresher on professional communication expectations.

Outcomes

In this workshop, participants will learn to:

• Identify common rhetorical situations for professional communication

• Rhetorically evaluate a variety of professional writing texts

• Identify and practice developing common workplace writing genres

• Conform to typical workplace writing standards and expectations

• Identify the key elements of an effective writing process

• Articulate the distinctions between higher and lower level concerns and prioritize when necessary

• Generate strategies for success in each stage of their writing process, regardless of project turn-around time

• Evaluate their writing process and work to modify it to better serve their writing needs and strengths and their organizational situation

• Demonstrate how this modified process might be enacted in various writing projects

Standard workshops are typically limited to 12 participants to ensure active engagement and individual feedback. If you have a larger group, please get in touch to talk about your options.