Introduction Memo Process of Development: 

The process of development of the Introduction Memo (IM) is, as an illustration, recursive. The project is set up this way, to show how we trial-and-error our way through writing processes, through rhetorical problem-solving. There are a number of ways to talk about what the whole class has gone through in the process. What I'll try to do here is talk through the issues of development chronologically at first, but by the time I'm done I'm not sure if that will make the most sense, and I may go back and restructure. 

Stage 1: Simple ... too simple--the Memo, and "Giving Info about Myself"

( caveat: I'm working from generalizations here. If your drafts ever get farther than this, don't be offended, I'm just trying to describe trends.) To begin with, people generally see the IM as involving two very simple things: a basic genre, the memo, and a very basic task, "tell a little about myself." These early oversimplifications are fine for this stage, of course. But what we should learn through the first test is that "introducing" successfully is more complicated than "telling about oneself," and that the memo actually has a bit more to it's formal structure than people originally think. The base genre conventions don't help a lick in figuring out a) what the purpose of this memo is, or b) how this particular text is going to achieve these goals. 

The answer to the successfully introducing question we discussed in class--in fact we discussed it before people drafted stage one, but it must not have "stuck"--and that answer is that successful introductions create connections for the people involved. They present areas of common ground, and, hopefully, develop into common understanding. It is possible for this to work in reverse--say you found out both people are football fans, but of hated rivals. This could still work in a way, as both understand where the other is coming from, though the identification is on opposite sides. But generally speaking, if you can find and explain that there is common ground, you've done your job.

The memo genre, at its most raw, is just Memorandum at the top, with To, From, Date, and Re as a consistent header to the document. But effective memos will be more structurally designed than that too. For starters, since memos can serve so many different kinds of purposes, and the Re line is just a few words, memos of any consequence will often have an Overview as the opening paragraph, where they explain to the reader just what this document is, and what it should do for the reader, and the writer. Similarly, each further section of the memo ought to have a pretty clear idea of it's purpose, and the different internal sections ought to have their own headings.

Stage 2: Getting closer in Genre, still fighting Audience, Purpose & Argument

Now certainly everyone didn't get all of the above from our discussion and test of draft 1, but our Second User Test revealed the above and more, in particular more about the ideas of purpose, audience, and argument.

on audience

The statement people kept making when we discussed the need for the memo to make connections to the audience was, "But we don't know anything about our audience." Well, in important ways, this just isn't true. You know that all of you are in a technical writing class, and that you have limited formal technical writing experience. But you are all writing majors, and so have fair writing experience of different, interesting kinds, and have common need to learn more about tech comm, writing, and working together. These are connections you can all build on. If you don't have formal tech comm experience, you all have tons of quite varying informal tech comm experiences, where you've had to teach, coach, or explain things to people who didn't know or understand. There have been lots of times when you were at least more expert than the person you were trying to teach or help. What did you learn from the experience? "What you learned," in an abstracted way, is exactly how you form connections to your classmates. This first audience lesson is a first lesson in getting past the "automatic no" in your head, and turning to a "dis-covery" mode of working through problems in writing processes.

on purpose

Test Two also fronted the idea that your memo is trying to do something (really some things). It is an interactive information product--as my old teachers used to say, writing is social action. Still a stronger way of explaining one of major purposes that runs through the memo we discussed last class is that writing is creating and maintaining relationships. Now most of you know little about each other, and me. What sort of image of your self, and of the relationship(s) you wish to create in this class, does the memo project? This is a vital question. How do you want to be perceived? In our readings, this is called ethos (ee-thos), and you should cultivate it carefully. And it is through thinking about how to begin making connections, that are relevant, and begin positive relationships, that one must think about what kinds of experiences are best to include in the memo, and why. As Test Two also suggests, some good sorts of example experiences to include might be: informal tech comm experience, writing experience, team experience, etc. Why is it a good idea to include a number of varying examples?

on argument

Finally, for now at least, we should point out that for each section of the memo, the "connection" you are trying to make, you are in fact arguing. Therefore, to do an effective job, you should work at making sure all the parts of the argument are present and explicit. So somewhere in each section it should actually say something like: ... this experience connects to English 424 and our class because ... (modified to your specifics, of course) which would be making the claim explicit. Each section should also have a part where it clearly shares an actual example, a "One time, when I was at band camp ..." actual experience, making the support both entertaining and explicit. Finally there should be some warranting, that explains how the evidence backs up the claim. This "argument checking" is in the middle section of our Test Two as well.

I'm sure we'll be talking about all of this more, but hopefully this is giving you a picture of the complex process of development these "simple memos" are going through, and an understanding of how the concepts of rhetoric are coming into play all over the place.