Writing for Practical Purposes

obligatory courses

The course aims at familiarizing students with the practical aspects of a written expression with an emphasis on drafting professional and formal texts. In this course, students will learn about how to adequately and clearly formulate longer formal written expressions, considering text coherence and cohesion and the target audience. Students will practise writing formal correspondence (both traditional and electronic), including but not limited to cover letters, CVs, memoranda, and reports, using vocabulary and expressions according to current writing conventions in the English language.

I. Introduction:

Basics: clarity of communication; avoiding cliches; use of word processor (tables, style, paragraph settings: line spacing, indentations; font settings: position, scaling, spacing, custom settings, review and tracking, page layout; need for observing formal requirements.

Advanced: Awareness of the medium: difference between writing for print and online publishing, SEO; stylistic register; importance of cultural context.

Exercise examples: error correction, formatting of a sample text, rewriting an article in a different stylistic register; adapting the same text for print and web publication.

Number of meetings devoted to the subject: 3.

II. Awareness of one’s target audience:

Necessity of keeping one’s target audience in mind. Impact on stylistic register, jargon, lexicon, grammatical structures.

Exercise examples: rewriting a text intended for one group for another (e.g. rewriting a scientific text as a popular science text).

Number of meetings devoted to the subject: 2.

III. Professional correspondence:

Adopting an appropriate style, adapting to the proper degree of formality (when can we be less formal; how to suggest a less formal/more direct way of referring to one’s correspondent), referring to earlier communications, the issue of appropriate length, commonly used phrases, proper formatting.

Exercise examples: writing an offer, writing an inquiry letter, writing an letter of complaint, etc.

Number of meetings devoted to the subject: 2.

IV. Writing a cover letter and a CV:

Adapting a CV to a specific job offer, appropriate length, relevant information. Information to be included in a cover letter? What should be included?

Number of meetings devoted to the subject: 2.

Exercise examples: writing two CVs and cover letters as responses to specific job offers.

V. Writing reports:

Activity reports, based on quantitative data (particularly statistics), qualitative data (e.g. interviews), The importance of cohesion and clearly communicating one’s thought process.

Exercise example: writing a report.

Number of meetings devoted to the subject: 3.

VI. Writing for marketing purposes:

Strategies of writing marketing texts; various forms of persuasion; avoiding stereotypes and cliches; maintaining audience attention; choosing the appropriate visuals; importance of cultural context; marketing and ethics.

Exercise examples: writing copy for a specific product/service; illustration choice.

Number of meetings devoted to the subject: 3.

1. A. Ashley, The Oxford Book of Commercial Correspondence. Oxford University Press, 2004

2. Wilma Davidson. Business Writing, third edition. St. Martin's Griffin, 2015

3. Robert W. Bly. The Copywriter's Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Copy That Sells. 4th Edition. St. Martin's Griffin, 2020

4. Robert W. Bly. The Encyclopedia of Business Letters, Faxes, and E-mail. Second edition. Career Press 2009

5. Mark Shaw and Giles Lingwood. Copywriting: Successful Writing for Design, Advertising and Marketing. 3rd Edition. Laurence King Publishing, 2022

6. Robert W. Bly. The Content Marketing Handbook. Entrepreneur Press. 2020

7. Macpherson, R., Advanced Written English, PWN 2007

8. ---. English for Academic Purposes, PWN 2012

9. ---. English for Writers and Translators, PWN 1996

Knowledge

Students will be able to:

- use in writing tasks the knowledge of English grammar, syntax, morphology and pragmatics on an advanced level (K_W05)

- characterize all kinds of factors relevant for professional activities related to professional writing (K_W12)

Abilities

Students will be able to:

- collect information from various sources, critically assess a source and usefulness of information; analyse and draw generalizations on the basis of information so obtained in relation to various written assigments (K_U05)

- employ modern technology for the sake of obtaining information and using various communication channels and techniques to create successful written texts (K_U07)

- present knowledge on relevant academic topics and communicate it in a cohesive, precise and linguistically correct manner in the English language at level C1 as defined by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (K_U09)

Social competences

Students will be ready to:

- undertake life-long learning and personal development, applying skills and competences to write various texts from professional correspondence through reports to marketing texts (K_K02)

- implement knowledge to describe a problem and identify means to solve it in different forms of writing (K_U04)

Education at language level B2+.

Assessment is based on class participation and completion of assigned classwork and homework. Written assignments are evaluated on the basis of their linguistic correctness, appropriate style and register, coherence and cohesion and selection of arguments.

The retake consists in submitting written assignments which the student failed to submit and/or in rewriting assignments evaluated negatively, or in writing a new extra assignment or assignments. The submitted assignments must obtain positive grades.

Two or three (to be determined by a specific group teacher) formally justified absences are allowed. Ways of making up for missed classes are to be negotiated with the class instructor.