One common workplace writing genre you will use in the future is the personal self-reflection or evaluation. Most likely, you will use this type of argument during workplace performance reviews, when you ask for a raise or a benefit, or any time your employer or others need to have written evidence of accountability for your progress. Here is a brief reading to get you started.
As a way to practice this type of workplace writing, your last assignment of the semester will be to review your performance in terms of the course objectives. In order to write a successful Performance Review, you will need to use the following strategies:
Review the course objectives from the syllabus.
What do you feel you have achieved?
Can you find concrete evidence of this through your work? Looking back at your process work, class discussions, and major projects may prove helpful.
Demonstrate how your efforts this quarter have been aligned with the course objectives.
Review the stages you went through to create documents for the course.
Compare older drafts to newer drafts. What did you learn from peer review comments? What did you learn from the revision process? You should quote or paraphrase examples from your work.
Was your time used wisely? How might you improve for future workplace writing projects?
A performance review should remain upbeat. However, overly positive reviews show a lack of reflection and potential delusion on the part of the writer.
What did you struggle with in learning to write for the workplace?
How have you overcome these difficulties? What evidence of overcoming these difficulties can you show from your work?
What areas of writing or collaboration do you still need to work on? Evidence?
Keep audience-based reasoning in mind.
What does your professor or “supervisor” value and care about?
What arguments should you stay away from because they are not audience-based?
