Date of Award
5-27-2014
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Rhetoric and Writing
First Advisor
Cynthia Nahrwold
Abstract
In a nine-week online survey, the perceptions of 86 nonacademic workplace salaried employees concerning the kinds and frequencies of documents written, and the writing knowledge and skills needed to effectively perform writing tasks in their jobs, were studied. The primary objective was to determine if employees understood concepts of audience and audience analysis. The results suggest that the majority (64 percent) of participants are not familiar with audience or audience analysis concepts. In addition, most participants stressed the importance of Lower Order Concerns (LOCs) &mdash elements such as sentence structure, punctuation, word choice, and spelling &mdash over Higher Order Concerns (HOCs) &mdash elements in writing such as thesis or focus, audience and purpose, organization, and development in writing. These results indicate that a significant number of salaried employees who write in our workplaces probably lack rhetorical writing knowledge. In view of this, I developed a short course to enhance workplace salaried employee's rhetorical writing knowledge and skills.
Recommended Citation
Scull, Betty J., "Assessing Writing on the Job: Toward Development of a Workplace Writing Curriculum" (2014). Theses and Dissertations. 494.
https://research.ualr.edu/etd/494
