Initial Task: PPP

I need to get an idea of who you are and the level of your written and spoken English, so we will do this with a simple task/subject in which you are THE world expert:

YOU!

My Personal/Professional Profile.

I want you to imagine that you are on the first day of your M2 internship/placement/work experience (not ‘stage‘, notice – the word exists in English but is a faux ami!) OR, if you prefer on the first day of your first position post Master’s graduation….

Here’s the video instruction (which I will have gone over in class)… BUT NB in 23-24 it looks like we will not need a distance-based rentrée so your task will be to produce the PPP in hard copy (word-processed and printed) form only.  Do NOT send it to me electronically.

 To relay this in words for your reference:

You ‘bump into’ your boss (who interviewed you) at the coffee machine on your first day in your new post and the conversation goes like this:

« Hi there, remember me?  I interviewed you!  Call me ‘Tony’ from now on – we’re pretty informal here…. 

Could you do me a favour?  We have a tradition in which we put up on our intranet / website and in our magazine a ‘personal/professional profile‘ of all our new recruits so that colleagues and clients can get to know you.  It needs to be of an absolute minimum of  1 page and a maximum of 2 x pages in length:  A4, 12pt text without excessive spacing between lines and may include up to two ‘smallish’ photos.  [NB in ‘Tony The Tutor’ mode: I am really anticipating TWO full pages, as I can’t see how you will be able to interest a colleague or client reader with less…AND I will be giving you time in class to advance your work.]

This is NOT your cv – we’ve already got that – (though you might need to repeat just a little of your academic and employent background ‘en passant’) : a cv is, to be frank, little more than a boring list of events and dates anyway…. rather we need this profile to give you ‘colour’, character and to make people want to meet you – after all, they are going to be working with YOU rather than a list of qualifications or dates!  You can write personally, introduce anecdotes or humour to express your personality for example…. anything to avoid it being boring!    

BUT

Above all, your personal interest in and commitment to Sustainability and Social Responsibility in your personal & professional life MUST shine out of the page (after all, that’s why we recruited you!): colleagues and clients are not going to be interested in working with people who are not as interested and committed as they are as I am sure you will readily appreciate.

Use any style or format – just create impact!    It has got to be web/ intranet ready – no-one is going to correct it or act as your editor, OK? (Tony-the-Tutor: so you need to check it, read it aloud, use Grammarly and Word-Reference to get it as near to perfect as you can WITHOUT resorting to translation tools or Artificial Intelligence. Also, if we are able to do all this in class, you can read part of your work there without having to commit it to a recording.  Same goes for the PPP itself: please hand your PPP to me in class on paper (print in the ‘brouillon’ mode – save your print cartridge.).

VERY Strong Recommendations:

• DO NOT, under any circumstances, use a translation tool like DeepL, Google Translate etc.  First it is cheating – it isn’t your work, so why should I give you a mark for it?  Secondly there is no possibility of you actually learning anything.  Thirdly, the style of language such tools produce is almost always incorrect and totally evident to the tutor.  Don’t be tempted, then!  It amounts to plagiarism and will be heavily punished. You have been warned.
• DO use the following (especially the first two) – if you don’t you will simply be throwing away marks needlessly:
  • download a little piece of software called: ‘Grammarly‘ .  It is free.  If you set it up to operate in English for the purposes of this unit it will ‘look’ at everything you write in English whether it is using Word, PDF, Powerpoint, an email etc and it will offfer you corrections to your spelling and grammar. It also explains WHY, so you can actually learn from its suggested corrections.  It is like looking up a combined dictionary and grammar book and it is acceptable and is NOT cheating.  Please DO this – it can help your marks and your learning.  It will only annoy me as your marker if you don’t….and annoyed markers don’t give good marks!
  • use a decent dictionary like WordReference, not only does it act as a dictionary, it gives you examples of the contexts in which certain words and phrases are used, it helps avoid faux-amis and it offers synonyms to help you avoid repetitions – you will know by now that repetition is generally considered as poor technique and lazy writing without proofing (‘relecture‘ Fr): a sin of which you should, in your profession, never be found guilty! Use of dictionaries is considered acceptable and not to be cheating. Again, like Grammarly, if you take the time, it can help you learn and develop your vocabulary.
  • Change the language in Word/Open Office etc to English…. then you get a spell-check correction facility which can help you.  Effectively it acts as a dictionary – this is acceptable and is NOT cheating.
• MOST IMPORTANT: Do read your work OUT LOUD (à haute voix) – I know it sounds crazy, but it will help you. You hear the mistakes ‘bounce‘ off the walls, you will ‘fall over‘ errors and realise there is a problem somewhere. You will also begin to appreciate where your punctuation mistakes are creeping in as you will not have the proper ‘cues‘ with which to read the work and will ‘trip over‘ your own words.   [Aside.  I gave this advice to a young ‘lecteur‘ recently and he tried it on his own research writing and told me this morning that he ‘caught‘ far more mistakes readng his work aloud than he ever did reading with his eyes].  Seems to prove the advice works… try it!]

TUTOR INSTRUCTIONS

Due date To Be Advised (To Be Advised, but almost certainly our 3rd class together)  – and do not submit late without medical evidence – or penalties will be applied in fairness to colleagues who have hit their deadlines!).  Print on paper in ‘draft’ (‘brouillon’ Fr) mode and hand to me personally in class.  IF (and ONLY IF) we are back to confinement of some sort or other, then you may submit your work by email to my address tjolley@gmail.com  provided the file sizes are small OR (preferably), host your work somewhere online where I can access it and send me the link needed. I will not accept excuses like ‘I couldn’t find a printer’… you MUST hand work in ON the DUE DATE and in the prescribed form as above.

Assessment Criteria

What will I be looking for in your written work? –

• that it follows the specification.  Your boss has asked you to do something for him/her on your first day in post- you should be looking to impress him/her by following all his instructions to the letter!
• that it looks good on the page.  This is to go directly on the web/intranet / in a corporate magazine.  It creates an impression of your employer and of YOU.  Even before someone reads it their eyes will take in the page to form a first impression…and as we know from the old adage: ‘You don’t get  second chance to make a first impression‘.  Think about the use of space, structure, the position of photos etc. (NB. according to the BBC, 85% of CVs are NEVER READ because the covering letter is no good, or because the CV has no visual impact so there is not point in reading the content … if you can’t ‘sell‘ yourself, you will hardly ‘sell’ the company will you?).   Also, you are going to work in industries which are very much oriented towards accuracy, interpretation, explanation, presentation and creating impact… I am trying to rehearse you for this reality.
• that you use the tools I have recommended in the proofing (‘relecture‘ Fr) of your work to ‘catch & correct’ obvious errors.  Lazy, ‘I couldn’t be bothered to use the tools or to proof my work‘, errors will be heavily penalised and in this particular situation would represent some acute embarassment for you professionally. You would want to avoid that at all costs of course: your reputation is at stake.
• that your meaning is abundantly clear in English even if there are improvements which might be made to expression, style etc.  This we can deal with together!

Looking forward to receiving your work!

TJ.