ATS1298: Professional writing

30% Assessment 1: Magazine writing
30% Assessment 2: Social media writing
40% Assessments 3: Essay/ Position paper

Overall comments: Damn, this is a unit that you can exert medium-ish effort to get a 90+, but I discounted how much time a good essay takes to write, realistically. I really enjoyed this unit’s content; it's practical and the learned writing skills are applicable in jobs/ marketing or advertising positions. The small tutorials weren’t intimidating, and you can casually speak to your tutor. Mm, this unit is advertised as a bludge/ WAM booster, but I would say, it’s very easy to get a pass, easy to get a credit to distinction/ low HD but above 87-ish requires effort and communicating with the tutors to understand exactly what they want – in terms of the criteria. But yes, I would recommend this as an easy unit to anyone who enjoys creative/ engaging writing (specialist style writing – simple language, caters to the intended audience), conversely, doing VCE English language helped a ton with the analysis part of the assessments (using metalanguage).

Assessment 1 – Magazine writing: 900 word article + 600 word analysis
You have to write an article about a given academic topic, for your chosen magazine (eg: Time, NatGeo, New Yorker). During this sem (pretty sure topic changes every year), I wrote about the consequences of excessive usage of mobile phones as an article for National Geographic. To start off, I read and highlighted the key info in the research paper. Then, I summarised the important findings and selected a few stats I want to add to the article. I researched and read some NatGeo articles to figure out their writing style (this is part of the marking criteria – catering to the audience). You have leeway to be as creative as you’d like, depending on your chosen magazine (eg: narrative, persuasive), as long as you don’t summarise the research paper and make sure to include key findings.

Assessment 2 – Social media writing: 2x400 word EDMs + 600 word explanatory statement
An EDM is one of those promotional emails you subscribe to, from your favourite store. You have to write a marketing campaign for one store (eg: Women’s jewellery store) and an appeal for another (eg: Oxfam). Once again, your tone can be as creative as you like and add any features that specifically cater to the purpose and audience of the email, but you have to explain your reasoning behind each feature and link it to rhetoric (eg: use of slang/ netspeak/ neologisms appeal to the young subscribers). My EDMs were sort of risky, as they didn’t follow the typical promotional structure, but the creativity was awarded, so yes, as long as you can explain and connect it to pathos/ ethos/ logos, your writing style doesn’t have to conform to the structure of usual spam emails (eg: I personified the store’s products and gave names and pronouns to the bucket hats = 92/100 :}.

Assessment 3 – Essay/ position paper: 1600 word position paper or essay
You are given the choice of either writing style and their corresponding topic and have to center the piece on a discussion of a particular issue (eg: student accommodation in Melbourne or inclusivity in writing). You are free to take ideas/ examples from recent research papers and the unit readings and write a cohesive piece with a contention. Unfortunately, I nearly failed this assessment (eek), so I cannot offer much advice other than: start this paper (at least a couple of sentences) more than a week before its due, as it was assigned during when assessments piled up from other units.
Goodluck!

Paul Atkinson + TAs

N/A

4/5

All lectures were recorded, the tutorial was streamed via zoom but

Professional writing S. Marson 2019 (can access it online via Monash lib)

1 x 1hr lecture weekly
1 x 1hr tutorial weekly

2020, semester 2.

81 HD