List of goals as a workplace writer

Assignment

Although Canvas calls this closure writing an “essay,” it is not. A bulleted list would be an appropriate response to this assignment.

Here’s one sample. Here’s a slightly more elaborate sample. Either approach is fine. However, take care to express your two to five items in “parallel” grammatical form, that is, all nouns or noun phrases, all verb phrases, or all complete sentences. 

The bulleted list above, in these directions, is “parallel.” That is, it contains only nouns–two single nouns followed by one noun phrase

To make this course your own, please submit, here, by the end of this week a list of your personal goals as a business and professional writer.

Rationale

You may have heard the saying “all learning is personal.” What this remark means is that only the information and ideas that fit into our real lives, personalities, and interests stay with us over the years. For example, when I was a pre-teen crazy over horses, I practically memorized a heavy hardbound book titled The Horseman’s Encyclopedia. I still know quite a lot about horses today.

If we want to be able to use what we learn, we need to find ways to attach new information and ideas to our real goals, needs, and interests. In today’s Age of Information, we all can benefit from being effective writers. You can probably find some aspect of your job, your major, or your career in which you could be happier if you could be more confident about your writing. These aspects will suggest to you a few personal goals for this course.

If you feel a little overwhelmed by setting goals this early in the course, relax. At the end of Weeks 2, 4, and 5 you’ll have the opportunity to update and/or alter these goals, as you gain experience from your reading and from your conversations with a wide variety of classmates.

Where you’ll use this bulleted list of goals in the future

You’ll be able to use them in Week 7 when you write a final learning letter that discusses and demonstrates what you’ve learned that addresses your opening goals.