The first task for this project is to interview the person from whom you requested assistance in Project 4 in order to gather information for an analytical report on how that person uses business communication on his or her job. In order to gather information for your report, you will need to generate a list of interview questions, interview the person, organize the information you gathered, and reinterview the person to fill in any gaps in data. Then, you will draft a report in which you analyze the information you gained.

You will want to gather information about:

• the kinds of business documents the person produces
• how much business communication the person uses
• the person's drafting/development/production processes
• the person's awareness of audience
• the person's awareness of style
• how the person manipulates his or her communication style
• any other aspects of the person's business communication habits and ideas that would help you in your report

As I said earlier, it is typical that gathering information for the report takes at least two interview sessions.

This document will be an analytical report; it will be formatted as a memo report. In the report you will present an analysis of the information you gather in your interview with a business communicator. For the interview session, you will prepare a list of questions. The responses to those questions will provide the information for your report. Yet you also need to analyze that information. In other words, you will need to make sense of the information and present in an organized way.

Put yet another way, your interview person will provide you with rather disconnected responses to a series of questions, like providing statistical data. By itself, that data means nothing. It does not constitute knowledge. Your goal is to help the reader build knowledge and understanding by making sense of all those responses.

Project Due Dates

• Rough Draft: TBA
• APS: TBA
• Revised Project: TBA

Project Format

Memo Report