Learning objectives
There are three main objectives of the course:
1. deepen themes related to communication in the profession of the social worker: aspects of content and aspects of relationship;
2. acquire the basic professional writing techniques, to achieve the maximum effectiveness of the message, based on the subject, the means used and the recipient;
3. acquire the skills to write complex topics in a clear, organic and effective way.
Prerequisites
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Course unit content
The course is mainly aimed at students in the first year of the three-year degree course: students who have high school studies behind them and who, therefore, have not yet had to deal with the languages that characterize the world of work; for all of them, writing is the activity that was done for their professor, who willy-nilly would read and correct their essays.
This course makes clear to them that this is not the case in everyday working life. Writing is an instrument that does not need to demonstrate something of itself, but rather to achieve fixed objectives, and to do this it must be used appropriately.
Writing, therefore, is not only to be understood as an activity reserved for a few naturally endowed but also as the patrimony of techniques that can be easily trained and improved with exercise. So much exercise.
The topics range from the basic tools of effective writing, up to some analysis of texts directly taken from the life of the social worker.
Full programme
The axioms of communication
Neurological assumptions
The process of writing: planning, drafting, revision
Effective writing:
be simple, straight, concrete.
summarize a text (with and without dialogues)
organize the structure
be reader focused
Style exercises: Queneau's lesson
Bibliography
Anna Maria Testa, Farsi capire, RCS, Milano 2009
Alessandro Lucchini (a cura di), Business writing, Sperling & Kupfer, Milano 2006 (in pdf)
Alfredo Fioritto, Manuale di stile dei documenti amministrativi, Il Mulino, Bologna 2009
Gianrico Carofiglio, Con parole precise. Breviario di scrittura civile, Laterza Roma 2015.
Teaching methods
Lessons are held in class and are structured in both theoretical and practical parts. Most of the exercises are conducted in small groups and then discussed all together, in order to put the students more and more in touch with different points of view.
There are also individual exercises to do at home and to be delivered via the Elly platform.
Assessment methods and criteria
The exams are written. Students are given a real document, which presents different communication problems.
The student must conduct an accurate analysis of the text to identify the elements that support or which hinder the reading and understanding of the text.
When the analysis is done, the student must produce a rewriting of his own, according to the criteria of effective writing.
Other information
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