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IMPORTANT This sample has strengths and weakness, mostly weaknesses

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IMPORTANT This sample has strengths and weakness, mostly weaknesses. Therefore, you should not use this sample as a model for your own work. PROJECT 3A - PROPOSAL Proposal To: Sylvia Morales From: John, Paul, Ringo, George Date: November 13, 2018 Subject: Giving presentation to UWP 104 about high and low-context culture Introduction: Learning business writing is a very important thing. Whether you are doing business or writing an email to your boss on a daily basis, it is very beneficial to know some of the skills and rules of business writing. However, there are too many rules and lessons that business writing need to cover. Just like the rhetorical situation that we learned earlier. Different situation requires different skills and make different rhetorical choices. It is difficult for business writing professors to cover all business writing knowledge in ten weeks. International cooperation is becoming more and more common nowadays. Students don’t have time to learn how to do intercultural business writing due to the lack of class time. Lack of knowing cultural of other countries will cause many problems while writing something for their business. The biggest problem will be hard for the business writer to have the right persona in their writing. When they don’t know the personalities of their intercultural business partners, they could not create a good persona. As we learned before, the persona is very important in rhetorical writing. Without any doubt that intercultural communication is challenging, but there are some skills we can use. There is a concept that can quickly help business people divide strange countries into two regions. The concept is high context culture and low context culture. According to Neese, “a high-context culture relies on implicit communication and nonverbal cues. In high-context communication, a message cannot be understood without a great deal of background information” (Neese, 1). Asian, African, Arab, central European and Latin American cultures usually belong to high-context cultures. Low-context culture is on the opposite side. Western European roots, such as the United States and Australia, belong to low-context cultures. Based on this concept, new business writers can quickly classify countries with several large businesses countries. When we do business writing in an urgent situation, even though we don’t know the cultural background in advance, we still can communicate and write business information with each other in the right way. subject date page 2 of 5 In order to solve this problem and help the professor to save class time for another important concept, we think we can have the professor to assign a group project that requires students to give a presentation about specific countries’ context level. After researching and learning more about this countries’ context level, then they can present to the class and educate the class in front of classmates. In order to help new business writers in our class, we will give a presentation about high and low context culture to help them to know this important concept. We will discuss the importance of high and low context culture and the benefits of knowing it in this proposal. Problem and significance ? Problem for Sylvia: cannot cover the concepts of high-context and low-context cultures. As a one-quarter course, UWP 104 only has around 20 class meetings, so it is impossible to cover every significant aspect of business writing. The class itself can only serve as a guideline, which focuses on general issues in business writing and provides universal solutions. Specifically, we have disused how audience, as a rhetorical situation to consider in writing, influences the author’s writing style. However, what we did in class was nothing more than quickly going through the relevant chapters in textbook and thinking how the four questions listed are linked to our own writings. Those questions are necessary to consider but are not specific enough to cover all aspects of rhetorical situation. In real cases, the notion of audience can be much more complicated, given the diversity in the background of target readers. Communication with audience from high-context culture can be totally different from the ones from low-context culture, but the two concepts are never mentioned in this class. ? Significance: students have to learn the two concepts due to the globalization of business Nowadays, there is an inevitable trend of business globalization. In 2017, the United States was the world’s third-largest exporter and second-largest importer, and the total U.S. international trade was 5.2 trillion dollars. How does such tremendous amount of trade come from? They are all results of single transnational business negotiation, which requires both companies to reach an agreement via meeting or writing. To become successful business writers, we cannot just focus on trades and deals within the U.S. The access to global market requires current business writers to understand the ideas of high-context and low-context cultures. If the writers do not understand the topic well or cannot apply it to the communication with international business partner, the company might lose a great opportunity to open new market. For example, when communicating with people from high-text cultures like China, being too straightforward on your goal or asking questions too directly is not decent in business. The reason why we chose the U.S. and China as examples is not only because of their identities as low-context and high-context cultures, respectively, but also because of the high frequency of trade between the two countries, as China is currently U.S.’s largest goods trading partner with more than 600 billion dollars of goods trade in 2017. It can be indicated that the business between high-context and low-context countries is extremely common. As a result, students will inevitably face this problem in future career and must know how to resolve it. Understanding the examples we chose help the students utilize the ideas in the future when they communicate with people from cultures other than China and modify their writings according to the audience’s culture contexts. ? Problem for students: inexperienced in communication with high-context culture audience The notions of high-context and low-context culture are highly specialized, which means most college students might never hear about it, not to mention utilize the idea in business writing. In college, students might have experience communicating with international students and scholars. Nonetheless, the situation is totally subject date page 3 of 5 different from the one in business, in which the participants do not know each other at all. Communication with international students is much easier because they have already known American culture well and are adapted to the low-context environment, even though they could come from high-context cultures. On the other hand, foreign business partners might not be ready for the low-context conversation that we are used to, and being too straightforward with them might make the partners uncomfortable and lead to the failure of negotiation. Solution and Presentation Content High-context communication is different from culture to culture, and being unaware of cultural norms such as directedness or the significance of building a personal relationship with business can and will impact communications success. Both high-context and low context communication is important in business writing because these forms of communication and knowing how to best write to audiences that belong to cultures who use either of these communication forms is an important part of knowing what the audience is. Business writers must be able to discern the degree of context needed when writing to different cultures, and this then leads to controlling for the proper persona. Since knowing which cultures use high or low context communications falls under the ability of knowing what audience is being written to, we believe the solution is for Professor Silvia to assign a project to students and for each student to present their assignment to the class. Therefore, our proposed solution is below: Each student will be assigned a specific culture or country, which will allow students research and gain further understanding of their assigned country and their communications customs, as well as gain information from other students who research different countries. By allowing for students to research high-context and low-context communication cultures on their own, this will allow Professor Silvia to continue using class time to teach her students on other issues pertaining to business writing. The two examples our presentation will use in order to highlight cultural high-context communication differences are China and the United States. These two countries have incredibly different degrees of context communication. Chinese business customs and communications differ in the sense that they require investment in personal relations and place a strong emphasis on politeness. When writing to business partners, it is also important to ensure your writing is not too direct. Being too direct in communications or expressing yourself too honestly has the potential to make high-context cultures like businessmen and women uncomfortable. By contrast, here in the United States, United States communications tend to be low-context, with a preference to be direct in communicating. We believe it is important for students of Professor Sylvia’s class to understand the difference in context communication between these two Nations because of their sharp contrast. Students must be prepared to adapt different personas and have a deeper understanding of their audiences, which is why having an additional assignment that requires students to do additional research into outside countries could prove beneficial, especially for students interested in International business. It is important to note that high-context communication also doesn’t explicitly rely on verbal communication. High-context cultures also places emphasis solving issues as a collective group. Building stronger personal relationships, paying attention to nonverbal cues such as the situation business partners are in or the comfort partners show to each other when communicating all factors into developing trust before business transactions occur. Learning about this complicated form of communication can help business writers cater their message to a different audience and can lead to greater understanding between business writers in different cultures. Benefits for Audience Understanding a different situational culture is a cultural form that effectively enhances communication and effective ways of negotiation. For teachers and students, there have mainly benefits as following. subject date page 4 of 5 First, the teacher through the search and discussion of the proposed proposal, saving time for preparing lessons, can increase work efficiency. And in the process of teaching, you can clearly know the expression forms, expression methods, and ways of expression of high-context and low-context culture. This can also be convenient in the future classroom, can be established for the different races. Such as, when we tell jokes, high-scenes jokes from high-context cultures do not usually represented in other cultures as well, even in another high-context culture. Teacher can also receive this information and use easy-to-understand expressions in class and simple communication to prevent some students from understanding the meaning they want to express. Humor is very contextual, because if you only use the low-scenes information to interpret, a joke may become less funny. For example, in the United States, when doing business with others. The first thing is that people tend to understand the company background, the company's development prospects, and social evaluations. When they fully understand, they decide whether or not to corporate with each other. When the Chinese talk about business, the background investigation and research are the second. The first one is that Chinese people like to chat with you. And in the process of chatting with you in the wine bureau to know your personality, at the meantime advise you to drink a lot of wine, this kind of behavior in China is called: "persuade wine." Because there is an old saying in China, it is called: "Talking the truth after drinking." The meaning is that once people drink enough wine, they are willing to tell the truth. In fact, this is also a form of communication. First of all, everyone has become a friend. Later, in the frequency of gradual exchanges and drinking, slowly build up the understanding and trust of each other. Because after drinking, people will always put the most heartfelt thoughts inside. The most authentic character, the most trustworthy words are expressed. Therefore, in China, in business, people are more inclined to drink with you, then they know you, when they know you are trustworthy, they will choose to believe in your personality, and finally do business with you. Second, for our classmates, because we have students from different countries around the world, the United States is a diversified country, so it is necessary to learn the situation culture. It can not only help us better understand the meaning of people in different countries in the communication of daily life but also in the future business. In the business cooperation with people from different countries, we can also use the difference in contextual cultural exchange. Just as we have group projects in UWP class, our group member are from different places. It is necessary to understand the culture and adopt the appropriate way of working. It is also significant for each other to understand each other and make the cooperation more efficient. Wherever, communication between each other is more efficient and smoother. Conclusion: Knowing high and low context culture will help new business writers to create correct persona when they are communicating interculturally. In order to help the professor save class time and due to the lack of time in class, we will give a presentation about how to use high/low-context culture in business writing in UWP 104 to solve this problem and teach our classmate how to create right personal when they are in an urgent situation that they don’t know other countries’ background. We will main discuss China and America as examples of high-context cultures and low-context cultures. By give this presentation, our classmates will communicate better interculturally. subject date page 5 of 5 2021/5/5 S21-UWP104AY-Morales - Practice Evaluation S21-UWP104AY-Morales Home Syllabus Formal Projects Other Assi Other Assignments Practice Evaluation 1. Writing Task 2. Samples to Evaluate 3. Rhetorical Situation 4. Analysis Steps 5. Content for Evaluation 6. Format 7. Submission 8. Evaluation 9. Earn Full Points 1. Writing Task Evaluate a sample of the main project assignment before writing your own draft. To be an effective writer, you will need to develop reading skills that look beyond content to understand and judge the effectiveness of various writing strategies. Thus, the purpose of these assignments is to practice evaluating various sample texts. It is also an opportunity to practice writing to share information with colleagues. ? NOTE: You will also respond to one of your classmate’s evaluations. See the Practice Evaluations-Responses instructions for more information. 2. Samples to Evaluate You will write evaluations of the samples linked below. ? Make sure to choose the correct sample for each assignment. Project 1 Sample Job Search Materials https://sites.google.com/ucdavis.edu/s21-uwp104ay-morales/other-assignments/practice-evaluation 1/5 2021/5/5 S21-UWP104AY-Morales - Practice Evaluation Project 2 Sample Home Syllabus S21-UWP104AY-MoralesGenre Analysis Report Formal Projects Other Assi Project 3 Sample Proposal for Project 4 Project 4 Sample Applying Knowledge Website 3. Rhetorical Situation ? AUDIENCE Your audience for each evaluation is your classmates (think of them as professional colleagues). ? PURPOSE Your purpose is to provide an evaluation that will help your colleagues to write a stronger assignment. ? SECONDARY RHETORICAL SITUATION I am a secondary audience, one who is reviewing all students' abilities to understand and apply class concepts. 4. Analysis Steps In order to successfully evaluate each sample, you will need to fully understand the writer's rhetorical situation. You should consider the following: the original assignment instructions (e.g. 1 Job Search Materials, 2 Genre Analysis Report, etc.) the evaluation rubric (on each assignment instructions) the assigned reading (think about the techniques the writer is expected to apply; see the list of “Resources” on the assignment instructions) any class lessons relevant to the assignment (review the class calendar to help you remember) 5. Content for Evaluation https://sites.google.com/ucdavis.edu/s21-uwp104ay-morales/other-assignments/practice-evaluation 2/5 2021/5/5 S21-UWP104AY-Morales - Practice Evaluation ? CHOOSE THREE (3) RUBRIC CRITERIA Home S21-UWP104AY-Morales Syllabus Formal Projects Other Assi Choose any three (3) specific criteria (one of the letters - e.g. 1a, 3c, 4d, etc.) on the assignment's evaluation rubric. You can find the rubric on each specific assignment instructions. Discuss only these criteria in your evaluation. You should aim to choose different criteria for each practice evaluation assignment to help you develop an awareness of different writing concerns. ? INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING 1. an identification of each of the three rubric categories and criteria that you evaluated 2. a description of what the writer did with examples (quote when appropriate) 3. an evaluation (judgment) of the effectiveness 4. a reason (rationale) of why you think it is effective or ineffective 5. specific suggestions for improvement (if applicable) 6. Format https://sites.google.com/ucdavis.edu/s21-uwp104ay-morales/other-assignments/practice-evaluation 3/5 2021/5/5 S21-UWP104AY-Morales - Practice Evaluation Type your evaluation directly into the Canvas text box (not Google Drive). Formal Projects Other Assi S21-UWP104AY-Morales Home Syllabus Use the below as a template. You can cut and paste it into the Canvas text box or type it directly as it is represented below. Include the headers (in bold) as shown in the below example CATEGORY & CRITERIA 1 8. Style & Language: a. Language: show careful editing and consistent control of Standard Written English DESCRIPTION (do not judge in this section; just describe) In the sample cover letter, there were numerous instances where incorrect grammar was used. For example, there were phrases such as “I am writing to in response to” and “During working experience, I was…”. EVALUATION & REASON (this is where you judge) These mistakes weaken the effectiveness of the person’s cover letter because they might signify a lack of effort in that the applicant did not bother to look over and revise their cover letter before submitting it. SUGGESTIONS Grammar mistakes can be fixed by using Grammarly, checking the work with Google Docs grammar checker, asking several people to proofread, etc. CATEGORY & CRITERIA 2 same as above CATEGORY & CRITERIA 3 same as above 7. Submission You must submit your work directly to the Canvas assignment text box (not a Google Document) by the due date and time on the calendar. A technology problem is not an excuse for failing to submit an assignment, including this one, on time. Thus, you should not wait until the last minute to complete your assignment in case you encounter difficulties. By completing assignments early, you will make sure to allow yourself time to resolve any issues. https://sites.google.com/ucdavis.edu/s21-uwp104ay-morales/other-assignments/practice-evaluation 4/5 2021/5/5 8. Evaluation S21-UWP104AY-Morales S21-UWP104AY-Morales - Practice Evaluation Home Syllabus Formal Projects Other Assi 9. Earn Full Points You will not receive written instructor feedback on this assignment. However, I will be reviewing your work and responding through our classwork and lectures. Strong evaluations will: follow all directions on the assignment instructions show an understanding of the rhetorical situation of the sample show consideration of all resources: assignment instructions, rubric, webbook, class lessons, etc. write a convincing evaluation with convincing evidence and a clear rationale To earn full points, you are required to do the following: address the proper writing task, including evaluating the correct sample follow all directions; include all required content for each of the three criteria follow the format indicated in the instructions submit to the correct Canvas assignment submit by the due date and time NEXT: Practice Evaluation-Response https://sites.google.com/ucdavis.edu/s21-uwp104ay-morales/other-assignments/practice-evaluation 5/5 1. Addressing the Assignment 4. Organization & Connections a. Directions: all directions are carefully and correctly followed b. Application: the advice given in the assigned reading and discussed in class is applied a. Paragraph Focus: paragraphs and sections are focused on one specific claim and/or topic b. Emphasis: important ideas are placed at the beginning and end of paragraphs and sections c. Length: paragraphs, sections, lists, and sentences are of an effective length d. Order: paragraphs, claims, evidence, sections, and lists are logically and effectively ordered e. Connections: clear connections are made between all paragraphs, claims, evidence, etc. 2. Rhetorical Awareness 5. Genre & Format a. Correspondence: the letter is in business correspondence format a. Context: documents show an awareness of the specific job, industry, position, etc. b. Audience: documents show the writer is consciously appealing to the specific audience c. Purpose: documents show the writer is aware of the distinct purposes of each document b. Format: formatting is consistent and professional and emphasizes important ideas c. Headings: headings and subject lines are specific and effective for the purpose, d. Design: design choices (bolding, underlining, color, etc.) increase readability and emphasis, e. Parallelism: lists and headings are parallel d. Persona: appropriate persona(s) for the specific rhetorical situation in each document 3. Focus & Support 6. Style & Language a. Focus: maintains an appropriate focus for each text, including relevant and useful information a. Language: documents are carefully edited and show control of Standard Written English b. Style: the language of the job description is used effectively to show qualifications b. Claims: claims are made deliberately and are appropriate for the purpose c. Support: all claims are proven with specific and convincing evidence