We got off to a great start during our first week, and I’m excited to see what topics you choose for the correspondence unit. If you haven’t done so already, please download the file that contains the scenarios for Part 3 of the assignment and begin thinking about which letter you would like to respond to.
We will focus on the correspondence unit for most of Week 2, with some discussions about audience and the writing process along the way. Here’s a detailed breakdown of what we’ll be doing each day:
Before you come to class on Tuesday, please read Chapter 2 in the textbook and come to class with ideas for a few different positive and negative letters you could write for the correspondence unit. You’ll have a chance to give one another advice on your letter ideas, then you can begin drafting your letters after Tuesday’s class. In addition, please download, print out, and complete the Negative Letter Exercise, linked on the Readings page. (The password for this page can be found at the top of your printed policy document.) Come to class on Tuesday ready to discuss your rankings of the six letters in this exercise.
Before you come to class on Thursday, please read Chapter 7 in the textbook. We will spend most of the day in peer-review mode, reading one another’s letters and giving each other feedback on our drafts. Please come to class with complete drafts of the first two letters (the personal positive experience and the personal negative experience) in Microsoft Word format.
If you have any questions about Week 2, or about anything else related to class, please leave a comment on this post or send me an email. Otherwise, I’ll see you in class on Tuesday. Have a great weekend!
I’ve been trying to hunt down addresses of these stores and I’m having difficultly. Are we sending them to the individual stores or the headquarters? And how do we find the address?
Thanks.
Good question, Amber. The recipient of each letter will depend on what that letter is designed to do. If you’re writing about a negative experience with one employee at a store, you would probably send your letter to the manager of that store. However, if you’re writing about a general problem with the entire staff at one location of a chain store, you would send your letter to the store’s corporate headquarters.
The addresses for local stores should be easy to find on Google Maps or in the phone book. And you could call the store to find out the name of the manager. If you’re sending a letter to corporate headquarters, check the company’s website for contact information. Some companies will list a director of customer service or a vice president of customer relations; if so, address your letter to that person. If not, you might need to use the default salutation: “To whom it may concern:”.