Assignment 3: Internal Formal Report with Visual
essay代写 | 代做report | assignment代做 – 本题是一个essay写作, 涉及了essay等代写方面, 这是值得参考的assignment代写的题目
assignment Value: 40%
Due Date: Monday, April 10, 11:55 p.m.
Background Youre a finance co-op [student] working in the executive office of a successful [Canadian] public relations firm. The three partners who own the firm rely on an investment advisor to advise them on managing their assets, but sometimes they decide on their own to add or remove companies from their investment portfolio. Theyre interested in catching one of the current technology waves. Should they buy some shares in Yelp? Groupon? WebMD? Uber? Something else? A combo? (Rentz, Lentz, and Campagna, Problem-Solving Case 27, p. 487).
Public-relations firms represent a variety of interests (e.g., corporate, community, NGO, crisis management, employee relations). The focus of your firm does not necessarily have to determine your choices, but choosing related companies can improve the coherence of your report and therefore boost your ethos.
In A Professional and Practitioners Guide to Public Relations Research, Measurement, and Evaluation , David Michaelson and Don W. Stacks indicate that public relations has recently shifted its focus from mere media relations to the strategic management of communication: As part of the promotional mix of communication, public relations works in conjunction with advertising and marketing as an integral tool (48).
In like manner, in volume two of his Encyclopedia of Public Relations , Robert L. Heath identifies those involved in public relations as problem solvers. They are counselors who advise the organizational management on how to fit best into its environment. They are tacticians and technicians who design and craft communication tools such as media releases, employee newsletters, fundraising campaigns, publicity and promotion efforts, investor reports, and issue backgrounders and fact sheets (680).
Assignment Prepare a formal report recommending three possible companies in which the partners might invest: you should describe and assess the factors most salient to the interest of your employers.
Create this internal formal report for a firm and its partners (inventing their names). Remember that investing is, in a way, an endorsement of a company in which you invest, so the evaluation of possible investment targets is not entirely about potential profit.
Include a visual that helps your report achieve its main goals. An effective visual will establish your credibility, inform the partners, and persuade the partners that your
choices are best. The visual must be of your own design and appropriately integrated into the main text of the document.
Resources Rentz, Lentz, and Campagna, especially Chapters 3 (designing documents, pp. 87-94), 4 (visuals), 6 (positive relationships), 10 (persuasive messages), and 12 (reports); lecture notes up to and including Unit 12
Primary Audience The three partners of your firm (note: the report should not summarize basic details about the company and what it does, but, in the body of the report, it can mention relevant details related to the other companies that you are recommending).
Assignment Format Your report should feature the following sections:
- title page
- memorandum of transmittal
- table of contents
- list of figures
- executive summary
- body
- works cited (MLA format)
This structure entails some repetition, particularly in the memorandum of transmittal, the executive summary, and the conclusion in the body of the report.
Research Component Yo u m u s t u s e o u t s i d e s o u r c e s. I n a l l l i k e l i h o o d , t h e s e s o u r c e s w i l l b e p r i m a r i l y w e b – based sources (e.g., company websites, investing websites).
The best source for relevant databases is Western LibrariesResearch Guides BusinessCompany Research. Whenever you use any source, you must cite it properly. Follow the MLA guidelines described in The Canadian Writer’s Handbook: Second Essentials Edition , and see also the sample essay in Appendix B of this textbook.
Word Count: Between 1200-1400 words, excluding Front and Back Matter. That is, the body of the report cannot be less than 1200 words and cannot be more than 1400 words.
ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR ASSIGNMENT 3 (FORMAL REPORT)
Genre Formal reports come in three basic forms: information reports, which collect and present data; analytic reports, which not only present but also interpret data; and recommendation (or problem-solving) reports, which recommend a course of action to solve a particular problem. This assignment is a recommendation report, but it also presents and analyzes information: you will not only describe relevant aspects of each company but also recommend them based upon their relative merits. This threefold purpose will affect how you compose paragraphs and structure your report.
Style Reports typically use a formal style, avoiding contractions and informal language (slang, idiomatic expressions, and unnecessary metaphors). Rentz, Lentz, and Campagna indicate that shorter reports allow informal language, but to acknowledge the generic norms (and to reflect your subordinate position in the company), you should use formal diction throughout your report. With the exception of the transmittal messagewhere you directly address the recipientreports should not use first- and second-person pronouns (e.g., use this report recommends rather than I recommend).
Structure/Content Front Matter: Title Page Follow the format of the sample report appearing on page 453, making up the names for the company and the partners for whom you have prepared your report. While the title will be relatively brief, it should give the reader an idea of its purpose (by including the word recommendations).
Front Matter: Memorandum of Transmittal Although the sample transmittal message on page 454 is a letter, your report will feature a memorandum, which is appropriate to your relationship with the recipients (i.e., it is an internal message). This transmittal message requires four short paragraphs:
- an introduction identifying the attached document, requiring one or two sentences;
- an abbreviated list of recommendations, appearing in a vertical series (using either bullets or numbers). That is, each recommendation requires only a single sentence, each of which should summarize the detailed recommendation appearing at the end of your report;
- a brief note identifying opportunities for further research (relevant matters that you could not cover in this brief report); and
- a goodwill ending thanking the reader for giving you the opport unity to write the report.
Like the body of your report, your transmittal message will be shorter than it would be for an actual report, but you should still compose the four discrete paragraphs
expected for the transmittal message. On a double-spaced page, it should not exceed a single page (but dont worry if it is slightly longer).
NOTE: The pagination of the front matter (transmittal message, table of contents, executive summary) uses roman numerals. Do not number the title page; the transmittal message is page i.
Front Matter: Table of Contents Follow the format of the sample table on page 455, using two levels of headings for the body of the report (bolded main headings and unbolded subheadings). If you include visuals in your report, create a List of Figures, following the sample on page
- Because this report is short, you can put the Table of Contents and List of Figures on the same page. Do not include the table itself (which is page ii) among the list of contents.
Front Matter: Executive Summary After you have written the transmittal message, this part of the report might seem superfluous, but it differs from the transmittal message in two significant ways: its audience and its purpose. The audience for the transmittal message is the individual who commissioned the report, but the audience for the executive summary is anyone who might read the report. Yo u r r e p o r t i s m u c h s h o r t e r t h a n t h e s a m p l e r e p o r t i n t h e textbook, and your executive summary will feature only three of the four sections appearing in the sample:
- an introduction identifying the background and purpose of the report;
- a brief discussion of the evidence supporting the recommendations (in a longer report, this part would take up two sections, as in the textbook: methods and findings). That is, to establish your ethos as a researcher, you will identify the credible sources that you used to inform your report;
- the recommendations, copied from the transmittal message. Like the transmittal message, the executive summary should not exceed one double- spaced page.
Body of the Report: Format For a short report like this one, headings are not essential, but you should use them in the body of your report. See page 458 for an example of how to use headings in this part of the report: place the title of the report at the top of the page, centering it, and using a larger font; the other headings will also be larger than the rest of the text, bolded, and left-justified. For the paragraphs in your report, you will use a twelve-point font; in contrast, your main title should use a fourteen-point font, and your headings should use a thirteen-point font.
NOTE: You should follow the sample report in chapter 12 only as this assignment prompt indicates. The sample report includes features that are unnecessary or inappropriate for our purposes:
- the format of the transmittal message (you will write a memorandum, an internal document),
- the single spacing,
- the third level of headings (i.e., the subheadings in the body),
- the use of the first-person pronoun in the executive summary and body of the report,
- the section and report summaries,
- bulleted sections within the body, and
- the absence of a works-cited page.
Body of the Report: Introduction The introduction to a longer report typically contains a series of brief sections (e.g., background, scope, methodology). Because your report is brief, you need to compose only a single paragraph. It can condense the three-paragraph introduction from the sample report on page 458 into a single, brief paragraph: offer some context (i.e., describe your company), identify the problem, and state your purpose. Again, avoid first-person pronouns. Avoid I and we, using instead the name of your company or this report. This paragraph should not exceed four sentences.
Body of the Report: Comparison and Analysis: Paragraph Construction Because your purpose is persuasiveyou are trying to convince your reader to accept your analysis and to act upon your recommendationsyou should open each paragraph with a topic sentence that not only identifies the subject but also makes a claim about it. In subsequent sentences, you should validate that claim by discussing relevant details from the websites. Keep in mind that your purpose in the body paragraph is to describe and assess companies in which your firm might invest. To be compelling, your evidence must be specific. At the end of the paragraph, you should conclude with a sentence that sums up the discussion but that does not simply repeat the topic sentence. Without making a recommendationwhich should appear only at the end of your reportyour final sentence should identify the relative merit of investing in such a company.
An effective reporteven a brief report, like this onewill lead the reader through a number of stages. In this case, you will compose a series of paragraphs, each one dealing with a specific aspect of the companies that you have chosen. Avoid page-long paragraphs and paragraphs that contain more than eight or nine sentences: the longer the paragraph, the greater risk of redundancy (the unnecessary repetition of assertions or the inclusion of superfluous examples) or incoherence (the introduction of a second related-but-distinct topic). Try to keep your paragraphs between five and nine sentences long. Rather than devote a single, bloated paragraph to each company an approach sure to obscure important informationdiscuss a single aspect of a company, devoting more than one paragraph to each company. To enhance the coherence of your report, you should occasionally compare or contrast one company with another.
Your visual must relate clearly to the context in which it appears. That is, it should feature details that you address in the surrounding verbal text. An effective image should not include superfluous information: all details should complement your verbal text.
The effective integration of a visual involves a three-step process: you must choose the appropriate one, label it thoroughly, and integrate it correctly.
You must integrate the visual into the body of a paragraph as you would a quotation or a paraphrase, introducing it with Figure and the appropriate number. To complete it, you must identify the sources of both the data and the visual itself beneath the visual (if you made the latter, the source is Primary) and then comment on its relevance to your argument, as you would with any piece of evidence. This last point is particularly important, for commenting on the visual after you present it will prevent you from abandoning the visual between two paragraphs. Imagine an oral presentation in which the speaker introduces a new PowerPoint slide, advances to that slide, and then begins speaking about another subject. Such is the effect of failing to comment on the relevance of a visual after you present it in the body of your assignment.
Once again, because the appropriate place for the recommendations is the end of your report, you must not make recommendations in the body of the report.
Body of the Report: Recommendations/Conclusion For the purposes of concision and emphasis, your recommendations can appear in a numbered or bulleted list. If you want to stress the relative importance of your recommendations, use numbers to organize your list. If your recommendations are of equal importance, use bullets.
A useful format for your recommendations is to use a concise, bolded recommendation followed by supplementary comments on each one, similar (but not identical to) the sample report on page 468. Each recommendation involves future action, so do not conclude your report with a redundant paragraph titled Looking Ahead.
Back Matter: Works Cited Follow the MLA format discussed in Part VI of The Canadian Writers Handbook. For a short report like this one, you can place the works-cited entries on the same page as your recommendations.