Real-Life Communication
You are studying botany at a university that has a botanical garden.
The botanical garden operates an e-mail and telephone hotline. Members of
the public can phone or send an e-mail to ask questions about their gardens,
crops or other plants. The botanical garden's curator employs botany students
to answer the messages. You've been hired by the director to answer questions.
He tells you that there is more to the job than being good at botany.
When you reply to a question, you must use correct grammar and spelling, and
the tone must be polite and courteous. For the first while, the curator will
check your responses before you can send them.
Your first day on the
job, you check the e-mail messages to the hotline and discover the following:
"Dear Hotline,
Two years ago, I planted a magnolia tree in
my yard. I don't know what type it is. I have attached a picture to this e-mail
so you can see it. It has large, bright green leaves. It has grown bigger
since I planted it, and it looks healthy. The problem is that is has not
made any flowers. What should I do to get it to flower?"
Sincerely,
Peter Jones
You look at the pictures and you write your response.
Here are some terms you want to share with the letter writer:
Indumentum:
the fuzz that you can see on leaves
Cultvitar: a type of plant
produced by cultivation
Here is your letter:
Peter,
I figure your tree is an unselected seedling, or maybe it's a new cultivar
without much indumentum. It might be a magnolia grandiflora, or a greenback
magnolia, which is what people most call it.
If you want flowers
soon, this tree is a waste of time. It won't flower for twenty years. Even
then, it won't be much.
If you ask me, you should get rid of it and
replace it with a cultvitar that has known characteristic. You should look
for a tree that has dark green foliage with lots of indumentum. Be sure to
get one that has big flowers. If you get a big enogh tree, it might flower...
Your Name
You send the email to the curator for his approval.
The curator tells you that your e-mail message has a bad tone. Even worse,
it has spelling and grammatical errors. He tells you to correct it. Make
your correction now.