My name is Abby Gargiulo and I am a member of the senior class here at Longwood University and will be graduating with my Bachelor’s of Science degree at the end of this month, which is May of 2018. For my undergraduate career, I chose to major in Communication Sciences and Disorders and minor in Spanish because I have always had a love for languages and wanted to pursue that interest more in my studies. Additionally, I presided as the president of the Catholic Campus Ministry, worked as a lead Spanish tutor for the Center of Academic Success, and acted as an active member of the National Speech and Hearing Association. This past semester, I was accepted into Longwood University’s Speech and Language Pathology master’s program. In my future career as a clinician, I hope to become a speech-language pathologist who works in some form of a medical setting whether it be in a hospital, skilled nursing facility, or home health care working with those who have endured traumatic brain injuries, strokes, or neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia. This desire to become a speech-language pathologist originated from watching my brother receive speech therapy services at a young age. I went to many of his therapy sessions with him and saw the positive impact the clinician made on his life. My hope is to be that person for someone else and their family in my future endeavors as a clinician.
My overall purpose in creating this ePortfolio is to demonstrate how the work I have created in my English 470 course is both reflective of the course outcomes (listed below) and to discuss my newly acquired knowledge regarding professional writing. To accomplish this, I have included my correspondence letters, brochure, press release, and formal report, each of which highlight a newly obtained skill regarding professional writing and are linked to one or more of the course outcomes for the class. On the following pages, the link between these four assignments and the course outcomes will be further examined. In general, this course has taught me a great deal about writing professional documents in the workplace in regards to how they are formatted and what information they contain. Overall, I feel this course has given me a new skill of how to go about creating documents in the workplace, a skill I am sure will prove invaluable in the upcoming years as it can be utilized in a variety of roles across many professions.
Course Learning Outcomes
- Analyze and produce writing genres commonly found in the professional world (e.g., business, gov., media);
- Create professional documents that use plain English (clear, concise, and grammatically correct);
- Conduct research to create content for a variety of professional documents (memos, letters, reports, etc.);
- Create professional documents that uses design—standard formats, layout, use of graphics, etc.
- Practice oral communication skills to present content effectively (enhanced with multimedia tools);
- Participate productively in collaborative projects.