424 Intro Memo Testing Round 2

What were your goals for the Intro Memo the second time through? List them here before trading papers or re-thinking:

Questions for the Reviewer:

I. Overall Impressions

• Does this person seem like someone you look forward to working with? 
• Do they make a case for having relevant experience, however informal? 
  • training, teaching, coaching, explaining: 
  • writing, in school or at work: 
  • being a teammate or a leader: 
  • is the person friendly, funny? 
  • Does the writing share any technology experience? Is he or she afraid of it?

II. Section Analysis--How does such a section "Work?"--Combining Goals & Argument
Pick a particular section or "chunk" of the memo to look at in more detail--does it:

1. . . . offer/share some sort of experience or example? Draw a box around it or mark the example [this is evidence or support].
   
2. . . . explain what the reader should "see in" or "get out of" the experience or example? Mark this with an underline and circle in the margin [explaining how to see the evidence so it supports the point--warrant]
   
3. . . . state, explicitly, that this experience can relate, in whatever way, to what we'll be doing in 424? As several people explained the first day of class, when we discussed introductions, the goal for successful introductions is to find ways to "relate."
4. . . . have a heading? Does the heading carry the point of the section in some inviting way like a title -- "You can't explain  (No. 3 above is, of course, the point--how the writer can "connect" to the class and it's members--what they have to offer/share) ?

III. Re-thinking Content Areas: Which Areas of Relation seem most Important? What kind of Relationship would you like to Create?
We "write" in order to "conduct business" over time--we make our language "last." So not surprisingly, like face-to-face conversations, a major function of writing is relationship "creation" and "maintennance." Ethics also tells us we ought to be trying to do the "right thing"--to always be working at "improving human relations." So with our introduction memos we're setting the stage and beginning relationships to support us through 424, and maybe beyond. What seem like the more important areas to make connections? Look over the "coverage" of topics and experience in the memo--which ones from the above list of possibilies does the writer touch on (they need not all be covered, but we will be discussing these and trying to categorize and prioritize them)? What sort of impression does the writer seem to be trying to make, just from the "content?" Share your take on whether the writer might shift the content and connections of the memo.