Written Communication is important because it showcases an individual’s ability to write good. The most poignant example of this Learning Outcome’s relevance can be found in George Orwell’s novel 1984, where entire populations could be politically controlled through the elimination of words that communicated iconoclastic ideals.
I intend to declare either English or Communications (or both) as majors in college, so the featured schoolwork for this portion of my Portfolio was particularly difficult to select. Despite the increasing aptitude of Spell-Check, professional writing skills are still a valuable and rare commodity. Here at New Tech, adept writers are imperative to group projects in virtually every class-even Algebra 2, where work groups are asked to present math equations with legible explanations and cover letters. In an age where conveying grammatically correct English is a dying art, I take pride in my (usually) proper use of punctuation, spelling, and vocabulary.
“Steinbeck Gets Critically Analyzed”, my first exemplar of Written Communication, is a newspaper article that I wrote as a junior in American Studies. I feel that this piece in particular demonstrates an interesting variety of sentence structures and has an awesome title, hence its selection. I imagine that a freelance writing career would be spent writing critical reviews structurally similar to this one.
“Who Wears the Pants: A Pants Party Questionnaire” is my Magnum Opus (and by far the most fun-to-write assignment EVER). Conceived one month ago in Political Studies, it was my satirical response to the political polls conducted by my classmates during the ‘Campaign Trail’ project. Included here is the original three page survey, followed by its mandatory two-page supplement of serious questions. Although this piece could have been included under a number of Learning Outcomes, I chose to place it Written Communication because it is exemplary of a very popular, very American comedic writing style that is used in one of my favorite reads, ‘America the Book’ by Jon Stewart. It was presented as a serious survey. The results were, at times, both confounding and enlightening.