Project 3: Career Rhetorical Practices

Overview: People come to college for a variety of reasons. Some are looking to advance their
current careers; others seek to move into new careers; others still are simply in college because
it’s “what you do” and have only vague notions of their future careers. Whatever the motivation
of the student, all professions and fields of study have communication practices that are
specialized for the work that is being done. This project presents a chance for you to research a
potential career while using the skills of description and analysis from both previous projects in
ways to communicate with audiences outside of the academic genre of "essay."
For this project, you will research the rhetorical skills and practices necessary for a successful,
practicing professional in a field that you are considering entering as a result of the college
degree or certificate that you are seeking (and taking ENGL 1010 as a requirement for). As I said
above, maybe you're already in this profession and college is just a way for you to get a
promotion or a raise. Maybe you're looking to switch professions to something completely
different. Even if you're just out of high school, just taking your general education courses to
start your college career, you probably have some sense of what you'd like to do with your life.
Any profession can work for this project, but I'll include some guidelines for choosing a
profession to research below.
Written Elements: In this project, you will create a text in the genre commonly known as
"infographic." You'll see many examples of infographics as part of our work, but, in short, an
infographic is an electronic poster of sorts that seeks to explain a complex idea to a wide
audience using a combination of text and graphics.
Evaluation Criteria:
 Physical Requirements: This element of the project will be defined in more detail as we
look at example infographics in class. We’ll consider the key features of this genre
through our discussions and define the physical features of an infographic that I'll be
using to evaluate your work.
 Your Rhetorical Situation: Consider your audience to be either late high school or early
college students who are undecided in their career paths. Your purpose will be to inform
these students about the general rhetorical skills and practices that will serve them best if
they are interested in the profession you’ve researched. The tone and level of formality
should take into account this audience while at the same time considering your more
professional purpose for creating a text like this.
 Content: This infographic should provide your reader with detailed information about
specific rhetorical skills and practices necessary for success in a specific career. Topics of
interest may include common genres in the profession, types of argumentative or
analytical tasks requiring specialized skills, communication strategies, or anything else
dealing with rhetoric or writing. Be as specific about these skills and practices as you can,
providing explanation and examples where necessary.
  Structure and Cohesion: Although this is not a written essay as with our other projects,
the general principles of coherence and cohesion still apply to any form of writing that
you may do. The focus should be clear and consistent throughout the text, and the
individual pieces of the text should be clearly connected for a single, cohesive document.
 Source Usage: You will need to draw from at least THREE credible research sources for
this project. Additionally, while all sources do need to be acknowledged, infographics
don’t typically make use of an academic citation style like MLA or APA. We’ll look at
genre-specific conventions for referencing sources in class.
 Mechanics and Style: As with every project in this class, a certain degree of conformity
to the dialect of Edited American English is expected. That being said, some adaptations
or exceptions to strict Edited American English may be appropriate for this project. You
should consider how your writing style may need to shift for this new, less formal
audience as compared to the audience for Project 2.

Guidelines for Choosing a Profession to Research

1. Be specific to the type of job you're looking at. Don't just name a general field of study or a
general job within that field. For example, some jobs that have a lot in common may still be
subdivided in ways that can be helpful, such as high school teacher or medical doctor. Do all
high school teachers have some commonly shared necessary skills among them? Sure. But an
English teacher will have to deal with a lot more student writing than a math teacher, so English
teachers will prioritize some skills that math teachers may not, and vice versa. Similarly, an
oncologist has very different kinds of information to convey to patients than an obstetrician, so
while they share a lot of skills, others will be unique to that specialty.
2. On the other hand, don't feel that you need to name a specific job title at a specific company. If
this is something that you already know because you're already in the profession, you're welcome
to do so. If you're not sure yet, then feel free to just name a specific job as above.
3. If the profession you're working towards is high up the chain, such as a CEO, then feel free to
focus on that high level job OR focus on a job that leads to that high level job, such as branch or
regional manager. Either way can work well for this project, and you'll probably find significant
overlap in the skills/practices needed anyway.