All business writing either persuades or informs. Often, business writers are asking for changes they cannot implement themselves. This assignment will give you ACTUAL experience in causing change in another organization. This assignment contains two parts, so read and follow instructions carefully.

1. Correspondence to Supervisor

Write a brief (200-300 word) note, memo, e-mail, or letter to the supervisor of some person who has provided excellent service for you or for someone else in the last two months. The service you reference must have been “above and beyond the call of duty,” and you must write to real named people about a real event that really happened in your life.

Your note must request the supervisor to take action to formally recognize the employee’s act. Merely commending the employee yourself is NOT what is required, as that will merely be posted in the employee’s file and result in an embarrassingly low grade for you. Deliver your request to the supervisor.

NOTE: The person to whom you are writing can be any supervisor in any establishment with which you have had contact (not just in your imagination–in real life–see above). The supervisor CAN NOT be someone YOU supervise, nor can the employee singled out be someone who works for you. Merely commending the employee yourself is NOT what is required, as that will merely be posted in the employee’s file and result in an embarrassingly low grade for you.

2. Memo to Your Instructor

Write a 400-500 word report to your instructor (in business memo format) describing the supervisor’s reaction and other consequences of your request. Include a copy of your request to the supervisor as the last page of your report to your instructor and submit both documents in ONE MS Word file. Remember that NO ACTION by the supervisor constitutes a valid result for the report.

Grading Criteria

• submitted on time

• meets length requirement

• contains no proofreading, grammar, or construction errors

• focuses on the information needs of the audience

• follows appropriate memo format – to, from, date, subject in heading, block style paragraphs, headings and subheadings, etc. (Correspondence to supervisor can be written in email, memo, or letter format. If you are not sure which one to use, look it up in look it up in articles and online sources).

• is single-spaced with double spacing between paragraphs

• is addressed to the recipient (memo 1-the supervisor, memo 2–me, with memo 1 included as the last page) and recipients are identified by both name and title

• includes note to supervisor as last page

• note to supervisor includes request for supervisor action in subject line and in the first sentence of the note