Extension Employee News

Writing for an Extension Audience

(The below information is available as a PDF file)

Dates and Registration Links

• July 18: PeeDee REC, Florence: Registration Link
• The Clemson and Sandhill REC workshops are full.

Contact

Susan Guynn, PhD
Director of Assessment and Scholarship
Associate Extension Specialist
sguynn@clemson.edu

Workshop Information Overview

Purpose:

The purpose of this workshop is to provide writing training for Clemson and SC State Extension Agents, so they can write publishable material for the Land-Grant Press and other professional publications, and write effective impact statements.

Workshop Overview and Format:

The main goal of the workshop is for Clemson and SC State Extension Agents to gain hands-on experience with the writing process and to develop efficient, effective writing strategies to use after the workshop ends.

Participants will bring an existing article or an idea for an article to work on throughout the workshop. They will leave the workshop with a revised existing paper or an outline of a new paper idea, a description of their target audience to refer to in the writing process, and a checklist of steps to use while writing and revising.

The workshop will be broken up into five stages: 1) planning, 2) paper organization, 3) paragraph organization, 4) sentence organization, and 5) steps to completion. Throughout the workshop, sample topics and papers will be presented as models for the writing process. We will reflect on the target audiences and develop strategies for organizing material in ways readers expect. We will clarify your own position on the subject and determine the most effective language to communicate your message. Each stage of the workshop will be broken up with activities to practice the concept (e.g., writing a clear topic sentence) and explore in small group discussions.

Workshop Agenda

• 9:00am Introduction: Writing is a learnable skill! Additionally, it can be a significant method of enhancing our own knowledge base as we address ourselves to our audiences in order to inform or sway opinions. Writing is a process and can be approached methodically. It invites reconsideration of our ideas through writing and revising. Methods and motivation: How do you make time for writing? What is your current writing “strategy”? Which one of these strategies might work for you?
• 9:30am Part 1: Planning Stage: Position. Audience. Purpose. Context.
• 10:30am Part 2: Decoding the paper organization. (Writing Papers in Biological Sciences) Transition question: What is the best way for my readers to access my purpose?
• 11:45 Lunch (provided)
• 12:30pm Part 3: The Paragraph (Writing Papers in Biological Sciences, Ch. 7)
• 2:00pm Part 4: Sentence Organization (Writing Papers in Biological Sciences)
• 3:00pm Part 5: Complete your article. 4:00pm Part 6: Free Work Time, Survey, and Close

Workshop Instructor Information

Facilitator’s Name: Cameron Bushnell, PhD
Organizations: English Department, College of Arts, Architecture, & Humanities, Clemson University; Pearce Center for Professional Communication, Clemson University
Facilitator’s Background: Associate Professor of English with experience teaching university writing courses; Director of Pearce Center for Professional Communication, which organizes semester-long graduate student seminars in writing in the disciplines. Dr. Bushnell has also conducted writing workshops for various departments, including Chemistry, Biological Sciences, Civil Engineering, and Environmental & Earth Sciences.

Learning Objectives

You cannot become a great writer in just one workshop, but you can make improvements by developing the vocabulary to discuss writing and develop an awareness of what makes writing strong by reading, discussing, and evaluating writing samples. A major aim of the workshop is to help Agents become more confident in their writing. The learning goals of this workshop are as follows:

Discuss and explain the preliminary stage of writing an article:

• Identify and describe the article’s target audience and what this audience knows/doesn’t know about this topic.
• Define the objective(s) for the article.
• Describe relevant context surrounding the issue (to address the audience’s prior knowledge and lay the foundation for citations).

Apply effective writing principles to the agent’s own writing:

• Identify and practice strategies for organizing information on three levels: the article level, paragraph level, and sentence level.
• Identify and use transitional phrases and words to organize paragraphs and sentences.
• Explain the need for citations and how to cite textual documents and visuals.
• Identify and use basic grammar and style principles.

Develop efficient writing practices to use after this workshop:

• Organize and defend a logical outline for the article based on audience, article objectives, and relevant context. The goal of this outline is to practice planning an article and to use it as a template for future articles.
• Create a working “audience avatar” to refer to while writing the article for a more concrete sense of the “audience.”
• Develop strategies for overcoming writing obstacles, such as not knowing where to begin, procrastinating, not making time to write, and lacking motivation to write.

Clemson University Cooperative Extension Service offers its programs to people of all ages, regardless of race, color, gender, religion, national origin, disability, political beliefs, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital or family status and is an equal opportunity employer.