Lesson Plans:

Pre-Assignment (75 minutes):

- Freewrite: have you ever used a product that you loved or hated? Tell us about
it.
- Discuss freewrites as a segue into next activity.
- Give students 15-20 minutes to Google funny reviews and choose one to share.
- Discuss reviews on products and how the students would give companies
suggestions for these products. At end of discussion, briefly lecture on formality
of companies and how they might be seek recommendations.
- Introduce prompt at end of class, leaving time for questions.

Post-Assignment (75 minutes):

Students will have read the section on reports (p. 308-348) in TCT
- Freewrite on the following: in your own words, what makes language formal?
- Discussion: using the text, break students into small groups and have them
brainstorm the parts of a formal report, particularly focusing on what the genre
conventions of a formal report contains. Have them illustrate these outlines of
genre convention on the boards and discuss any differences between outline
models.
- Leave final 20 minutes for students to brainstorm their own ideas on what
products for which they desire to construct a formal recommendations report,
Recommendation Report

100 Points
Genre: Report
Medium: Typed word document with multimodal components

Rhetorical Situation:
In prior SWAs, you have learned nuances of research and document design. After reading
chapter 10, Brief Reports and chapter 11 Formal Reports, you are now ready to try your
hand at creating a report of your own.

You just bought a new product that you find to be the best of the best and you wish to write
a recommendation report to other consumersthis product can be a computer, tablet,
phone, clothing, makeup, etc. The choice is yours, but it MUST be something you have
utilized in real life! NOTE: this is not an opinion piece, but rather a recommendation based
upon thorough and exhaustive research.

Specs:
5-7 pages, double spaced, headings, sub headings, appropriate research and citation
formatting (MLA or APA).

What is a recommendation report?

This type of report starts from a stated need, a selection of choices, or both and then
recommends one, some, or none. For example, a company might be looking at grammar-
checking software and want a recommendation on which product is the best. As the report
writer on this project, you could study the market for this type of application and
recommend one particular product, a couple of products (differing perhaps in their
strengths and their weaknesses), or none (maybe none of them are any good). The
recommendation report answers the question "Which option should we choose?" (or in
some cases "Which are the best options?) by recommending Product B, or maybe both
Products B and C, or none of the products.
What do I need to have a complete report?
Introduction: In the introduction, indicate that the document that follows is a
recommendation report. Instead of calling the report by name (which might not mean
anything to most readers), you can indicate its purpose. Also, provide an overview of the
contents of the report.
For some of these reports, you'll also be able to discuss the situation and the requirements
in the introductions. If there is little to say about them, you can merge them with the
introduction, or make the introduction two paragraphs long.
Technical Background: Most recommendation reports require technical discussion in order
to make the rest of the report meaningful. The dilemma with this kind of information is
whether to put it in a section of its own or to fit it into the comparison sections where it is
relevant. For example, a discussion of power and speed of tablet computers is going to
necessitate some discussion of RAM, megahertz, and processors. Should you put that in a
section that compares the tablets according to power and speed? Should you keep the
comparison neat and clean, limited strictly to the comparison and the conclusion? Maybe
all the technical background can be pitched in its own sectioneither toward the front of
the report or in an appendix.
Background on the Situation: For many of these reports, you'll need to discuss the problem,
need, or opportunity that has brought them about. If there is little that needs to be said
about it, this information can go in the introduction.
Requirements and Criteria: A critical part of recommendation reports is the discussion of
the requirements you'll use to reach the final decision or recommendation.
For example, if you're trying to recommend a tablet computer for use by employees, your
requirements are likely to involve size, cost, hard-disk storage, display quality, durability,
and battery function.
Requirements can be defined in several basic ways:

Numerical values: Many requirements are stated as maximum or minimum

numerical values. For example, there may be a cost requirementthe tablet should
cost no more than $900.
Yes/no values: Some requirements are simply a yes-no question. Does the tablet
come equipped with Bluetooth? Is the car equipped with voice recognition?
Ratings values: In some cases, key considerations cannot be handled either with
numerical values or yes/no values. For example, your organization might want a
tablet that has an ease-of-use rating of at least "good" by some nationally accepted
ratings group. Or you may have to assign ratings yourself.
The requirements section should also discuss how important the individual requirements
are in relation to each other. Picture the typical situation where no one option is best in all
categories of comparison. One option is cheaper; another has more functions; one has
better ease-of-use ratings; another is known to be more durable. Set up your requirements
so that they dictate a "winner" from situation where there is no obvious winner.
Discussion of the Options: In certain kinds of recommendation reports, you'll need to
explain how you narrowed the field of choices down to the ones your report focuses on.
Often, this follows right after the discussion of the requirements. Your basic requirements
may well narrow the field down for you. But there may be other considerations that
disqualify other optionsexplain these as well.
Additionally, you may need to provide brief descriptions of the options themselves. Don't
get this mixed up with the comparison that comes up in the next section. In this description
section, you provide a general discussion of the options so that readers will know
something about them. The discussion at this stage is not comparative. It's just a general
orientation to the options. In the tablets example, you might want to give some brief,
general specifications on each model about to be compared.

Category-by-Category Comparisons: One of the most important parts of a feasibility or

recommendation report is the comparison of the options. Remember that you include this
section so that readers can check your thinking and come up with different conclusions if
they desire. This should be handled category by category, rather than option by option.
Conclusions: The conclusions section of a feasibility or recommendation report is in part a
summary or restatement of the conclusions you have already reached in the comparison
sections. In this section, you restate the individual conclusions, for example, which model
had the best price, which had the best battery function, and so on.
But this section has to go further. It must untangle all the conflicting conclusions and
somehow reach the final conclusion, which is the one that states which is the best choice.
Thus, the conclusion section first lists the primary conclusionsthe simple, single-category
ones. But then it must state secondary conclusionsthe ones that balance conflicting
primary conclusions. For example, if one tablet is the least inexpensive but has poor battery
function, but another is the most expensive and has good battery function, which do you
choose, and why? The secondary conclusion would state the answer to this dilemma.
And of course, the conclusions section ends with the final conclusionthe one that states
which option is the best choice.
Recommendation or Final Opinion: The final section of recommendation reports state the
recommendation. You'd think that that ought to be obvious by now. Ordinarily it is, but
remember that some readers may skip right to the recommendation section and bypass all
your hard work! Also, there will be some cases where there may be a best choice but you
wouldn't want to recommend it. Early in their history, labtop computers were heavy and
unreliablethere may have been one model that was better than the rest, but even it was
not worth having.
The recommendation section should echo the most important conclusions leading to the
recommendation and then state the recommendation emphatically. Ordinarily, you may
need to recommend several options based on different possibilities. This can be handled, as
shown in the examples, with bulleted lists.
Example Schematic/Organizational Patterns of Recommendation Reports:
Convention/Expectation Points Available Points Earned

Content:
Student has thoroughly 50
researched and justified
their recommendation; the
report itself contains all
requirements as laid out in
the prompt.

Genre Conventions:
Thoroughly meets the
standard conventions of 20
recommendation report,
meaning the structure and
layout are reflective of the
examples in both TCT and
the prompt.

Language and Style:

Language and style reflects
the expected conventions
for a recommendation 20
report and includes
appropriate product-based
terminology as applicable.

Grammar and Punctuation:

Document has been
proofread for errors which 10
would impact the general
ethos of the document.

TOTAL: 100