Fundamentals of Business Writing | Business Communication Lecture | Workplace/Practical Writing
hello everyone this is tanya from professor tanya speaks and today we're going to be talking about workplace writing but before we do remember to like share comment and subscribe turn on the notification bell so that whenever i release a video you'll be the first to know now let's talk about workplace writing and for those of you who are saying what is workplace writing we're talking about any kind of writing that you do in a work environment in a work setting which also includes the writing that you do before you get to the workplace because if you have to send a cover letter or a resume that is considered workplace writing and when you are actually in the work setting then you may have to do a memo or a proposal or a report and those are also considered workplace writing but the reason we need to talk about workplace writing is because it requires a different set of skills and for some people if you've never been in a work environment before you may not be aware of what is required of workplace writing so let's say you're just coming from high school where you wrote essays then you need to be aware that the skills that you used to write an essay are good skills but they are not enough for workplace writing let me say that again the skills that you used to write your essays in high school are good but you need additional skills for workplace writing because essay writing is very direct whatever needs to be said is said without any hedging or with any way of making it sound tactful it's factual information reported as is but when you're doing workplace writing the first thing you have to do is put yourself in the place of the reader think of the impact your words will have on the reader and then you have to find a way to say it or write it so that the reader is not offended so that the reader will accept your message very easily now in order to understand that let me first briefly talk about the communication process whenever a sender has a message the sender has to encode or create a message in the most effective way so you have to think about how to encode your message or how to create a message so that when the receiver gets it he or she will decode it or take it apart or try to understand it so that they will understand it and so that they will not be offended and so that your meaning to them will be very clear so the first thing we have to do is think about the reader and we have to make sure that we create sentences and use words that will be most effective for the reader now if you're accustomed to only high school writing where you wrote essays or you wrote creative writing where you wrote stories that's good because it means that you already have good grammar now for business writing or workplace writing as it's sometimes called or practical writing good grammar is essential but that is basic that is a requirement so let's say you got us an a in english 12 because you are a great writer or a great creative writer or a great essay writer if you were not to write a business document let's say you were supposed to now write a memo and you use only the skills that you had developed in your essay writing or your creative writing more than likely that would give you a 70 percent in business writing yes 70 percent we consider 70 the standard which just means you have excellent writing skills but you have not yet developed business writing skills or workplace writing skills or practical writing skills now you have to work on creating effective workplace communication so i'm going to give you an idea of what are some of the skills that you need to know develop in order to transform your writing from academic writing to business writing and there's a huge difference so let's talk about those differences now let me give you a practical example of what we mean when we say they are differences in writing let's say for example you are working in a company and you've been doing a lot of the grunt work and you realize that the system that they are using to contact delinquent customers is not a great system now in academic writing you would probably just write your manager and say this system of contacting delinquent customers is not working very well i have a better suggestion now that is all true their delinquent the system isn't working well you have a better system because maybe somehow one day you run into some kind of information that makes you know that there's a better way that's all true and that's all factual but that is not what you would say to your manager because you are not the boss so now you have to put yourself in the place of the boss and say how can i tell the boss this and not offend so maybe you would suggest rather than saying it's not the best system maybe you would say something like maybe we could try this system or you could say something like could you allow me some time to investigate the advantages and disadvantages of trying another system and for those of you who are saying but why would i say that because you want your job because you want to keep your job and because in the real world your boss is your boss so when you're writing to your boss you have to think in terms of how can i say this so that it meets my boss's needs and that's something we always have to do when we're writing now when i'm writing my girlfriends maybe i would say hey what's up and i you know i'll say whatever i have to say it's not business writing right i'm more casual when i'm writing my students most times i say hi guys hello everyone a little bit more formal right when i'm writing my dean it's dear and her name i don't just say hey because we don't have that kind of relationship and that's what you have to keep in mind when you are writing you have to be aware of who the audience is and you have to write so that you meet the audience's needs so once you keep that in mind it makes a huge difference and that's the number one rule right with your audience in mind so audience awareness and in order to be aware of your audience you want to do audience analysis which i spoke about in this video you have to analyze your audience so whenever you have to do any kind of business communication the first thing you want to do is be aware of your audience who is going to read this communication do not write until you are sure about who your audience is because the way you write the words you use the language you choose must reflect an awareness and understanding of who your reader is so let's say you're in the organization and you're writing to the ceo and the ceo is four levels above you then you want to take into consideration the ceo's educational level and knowledge and understanding therefore you would not use any kind of language or you would not give an explanation that he already would know you would not insult him with writing things that you don't need to write or explain things you don't need to explain that's why you have to do audience analysis and in this video i spoke about how to do an audience analysis now once you've done an audience analysis that will guide you so first you analyze your audience and once you've analyzed your audience then you're going to put yourself in the place of the reader think about what the reader knows or doesn't know and then you're going to make sure that your communication meets those needs in terms of your sentences and your paragraphs now let's talk about what we're looking for in the sentences and then we'll talk about what we're looking for in the paragraphs now for sentences the first thing we're looking for is the you attitude where we write with the reader in mind i spoke about it in this video so you can always look at this video the next thing you're going to think about is positive language you are going to phrase whatever information you need to to communicate you are going to phrase it positively the next thing you're going to do is ensure that there is no bias around things like age gender culture etc there must be no bias the next thing you're going to do is make sure that you build credibility so when the person reads they know that you are a person with authority and you know what you're talking about you're also going to make sure that each sentence is clear and concise you also want to ensure that you have a friendly tone so even if you are the boss and even if you are telling your workers about something that they need to do which they haven't been doing you still have to maintain a friendly tone you also want to use simple plain language simple plain language simple not simplistic another thing you want to do is ensure that you differentiate between using the active versus the passive voice i spoke about it in this video most times we use the active voice but there are times when you will have to use the passive voice you also want to make sure that the words you use are familiar concrete and familiar you also want to ensure that you vary your sentence structure now there are four types of sentences that can be simple compound complex or compound complex we expect a variety of sentences because if not it sounds monotonous if everything is a simple sentence that's not good you want to know that there's a mixture of different types of sentences you also want to ensure that you structure the sentences so that the main idea of the sentence is highlighted so you're not just going to write each sentence randomly you're going to ensure that it's positioned like the nouns and the main ideas are positioned for maximum impact another thing you're going to do is make sure that you make your work parallel whether you're writing a bulleted list or just a regular sentence you're going to ensure that you maintain parallelism and then you want to ensure that between each sentence you have smooth transitions that you use words like however as a result of consequently therefore so you want to make sure that every sentence is linked to the next sentence and one effective way of doing that is to ensure that you repeat nouns so let's say you said something like yesterday i went to the doctor and i got bad news that's one simple sentence the next sentence the bad news was because blah blah blah blah okay you've linked the sentences by repeating the noun from the previous sentence so every sentence must flow into the next sentence now i know that sounds like a tall order but that's what good effective writing looks like and even though the reader may not be able to say oh she just used parallelism here or oh she just repeated a key phrase here the reader may not be able to identify what you've done but the impact will always be great and that's what you want to do to ensure that your reader feels the impact and knows that they are reading communication that is effective your job is to ensure that the communication process isn't hindered and that the communication process is effective and you want to know that the message that you meant to send is sent the way you want it to be sent and is received the way you want it to be received but if you want that to happen you have to make the effort to make sure that you choose the right sentences you use the you attitude you use positive language which i spoke about in this video you want to ensure that as much as you can everything flows and remember if you're only using the skills that you learned in high school this will not happen this takes practice okay so we just spoke about what you should do on a sentence level now let's talk about the paragraph some of the things that you need to keep in mind as you write paragraphs for your effective business writing or your workplace communication and before we talk about paragraphs let me also remind you that when you write the aim is to ensure readability you want to do whatever you can do to enhance the reader's ability to understand your writing so we say enhance their readability try to enhance the readability of your message one way that you do that is by ensuring that each sentence has no more than 20 words no more than 20 words so once you've written the sentence look back at it especially if it's a simple sentence it shouldn't even have 20 words but let's say it is a compound sentence or a complex sentence you want to ensure that it's no more than 20 words so that when the reader makes an attempt to read the reader immediately understands what you're saying but sometimes when sentences are too long then there's a fog and we talk about not being able to get through the fog so you want to ensure that there is nothing that could make a fog so make sure that it's readable we also use headings and we call that graphic highlighting bullets and headings because they make their reading easier that will enhance the readability of the mess so now that we've spoken about what you need to consider on a sentence level let's now talk about what you need to consider in terms of the paragraph a good paragraph is still a good paragraph where you must have a topic sentence now sometimes skillful writers don't use a topic sentence because they've been writing forever and they know how to stick to the point and they use a sentence at the beginning that gives an idea of what is to follow in the paragraph but as a rule you must use a topic sentence so every paragraph must have a topic sentence it must have supporting details and then it must have a concluding sentence at the end and the concluding sentence reflects the topic sentence so topic sentence supporting details and concluding sentence every paragraph must have this so in addition to the three parts you need to ensure that your paragraphs are developed in a variety of ways not just examples sometimes your paragraph needs to be developed by using comparison and contrast or sometimes you may want to write use talking about cause and effect or sometimes it can just be classification sometimes it can be narration whatever you choose make sure that there is a variety of ways that you develop your paragraph you also want to ensure that it's cohesive so between each paragraph there must be a link in the same way that i said for each sentence each sentence must be coherent and cohesive where they must stick to each other for paragraphs also there has to be a link between each paragraph that's something that you have to ensure that you include and you want to ensure that you combine sentences effectively so that your paragraph has a variety of sentences also now for those of you who are saying this is a lot you are correct it is a lot it is a lot and you're not expected to know all of it immediately there are a couple things that you can do immediately that will make a huge difference to your writing if you immediately adopt the you attitude and use positive language that's a good start in addition to all the other things that you should have been doing when you were doing essay writing and creative writing if you keep those skills and maintain those skills and you add the you attitude positive language and active versus passive voice those three will elevate your writing from a 70 percent to at least an 80 or more that's the start so if you want to ensure that you get at least 80 percent include the you attitude positive language and act the active voice now if you did not start out with good writing skills then that means you're not going to even get 70 percent 70 is when you already are a good creative writer or a good essay writer if you were not yet at that point then there's a lot more work you need to need to do now depending on the school or college you're at i know at my college we have the learning center and we have a ton of resources there's also a tutor who can help you because in business communication we don't tutor you in the fundamentals of writing it is assumed so what each person needs to do now is determine the level that he's coming to the class at and most of you already know because you have gotten feedback before from other instructors whether it was in high school or in another class you have gotten an idea of what your writing level is like business communication isn't going to change your writing level what it's going to do is introduce you to the business writing style that you need to use if you need help with the fundamentals then you need to get help from a learning center or a writing center or a tutor whether it's in your school or whether it's outside of your school but once again only you know how much time you can dedicate to this because let's say you know your writing skills are weak but you know you have a full-time job you have a family you have things to do then as long as you manage your expectations and as long as you know where to get the resources when you need them then that's good enough sometimes we don't expect you to all be brilliant writers at the beginning but we expect you to be aware of what you need to be doing in order to get to the stage that you need to be at now let me also see that what i've given you here is only an introduction i think i've covered just about everything that you need to know in order to be a good business writer or a good workplace writer however this is not detailed i just mentioned all the areas and if i can if i if my memory serves me correctly i believe i mentioned at least 20 things 20 areas that you need to work on what you now need to do is read the textbook you cannot read everything but based on what we covered in this video ensure that you understand good efficient reading strategies which i discussed in this video and i also discussed it in this video you are not expected to ever read every word in a textbook but you need to know the important things like the all of the things that i highlighted today and then you need to efficiently read your textbook that way you will highlight and read the things that you need to read you will highlight the must know things and the nice to know things you can let those pass for now but you have to read your textbook you cannot be a good business writer unless you've read the textbook and unless you've read the examples in the textbook because the examples in the textbook will help you to be better because it's not intuitive and it's not essay writing and it's not creative writing but the more you read examples and the more you see example especially if the textbook has before and after examples that will really be useful because the before tells you how the average person would write without any business writing training and then the after model tells you how to make the changes especially if there are annotations on the side read the annotations so read the before then read the after document then read the before document again this time reading the annotations and then read the after document and read the annotations because once you do that it begins to make more sense and for those of you who may not be in my class and you are interested in in reading a good textbook any business communication book written by bovee b-o-v-e-e is a good book or you can look at any book written by goffy i'll have the names up bovey guffey guffe locker mayor phillip those are excellent writers for business communication try to get your hand on one of their textbooks even if it's an old edition because the principles are the same what may change with later editions would be things like you know there's more about texting and blogging and any kind of newer communication mention of social media etc but in terms of basic writing skills books by any of these authors are good but you cannot improve your business communication writing until you have read a textbook that guides you because that's what you need you need the guidance because it is not intuitive so i'm going to suggest especially for my students once you've watched this video and you've watched all the other videos i want you to pick up the textbook now and efficiently read so that you can write well so that when i mark i can smile and so that when you get back your assignment you can smile also but i promise you that if you apply none of the principles in the textbook your grade will be 70 or less so i'm just keeping it real as usual i'm just telling you what you need to know business communication takes time takes a lot of work and it's a process you pre-write then you write and then you revise so any word that you hand in should have gone through at least those three stages pre-writing when you think about the audience you think about all the things that you need to consider you do a quick outline you jot down notes you decide on what it is that the reader could ask about what is it that the reader knows doesn't know what kinds of questions the reader could have once you've done your pre-writing then you write your first draft ensuring that you have at least three paragraphs because every business communication must have three paragraphs an introduction a body and a conclusion sometimes a body is one paragraph sometimes a body is ten paragraphs either way there must be three distinct parts and then there has to be a conclusion which tells specifically what needs to happen next the only way you'll get practice in in mastering that skill is from reading writing practice and practicing once you've written the draft then you want to revise it and you can create your own checklist i give my students a checklist where it tells them all the things that i spoke about would be in the checklist so they'll go through do i have a clear subject line did i use active voice a lot did i have a clear topic sentence and there's enough guidance once you've done that then you are ready to get it peer edited you're still not ready to hand it in you go through those three stages and then you want to ask someone who has done the course or who is doing the course to peer edit it for you because even though your friend is a good creative writer and even though your friend may have gotten a in english 12 if your friend does not understand business communication then your friend is still not going to help you to find business communication style errors so if you ever can't do peer editing when it's being offered with your class then find someone who can help just to give you that feedback once they've given you feedback then it's time to rewrite it and after you've rewritten you want to read it aloud to yourself so that you can hear if there are any arrows because reading silently sometimes is not enough if you can i know millennials don't like printing but it's good to print it so you can read it and another thing you can do is read from the last sentence to the first sentence you catch your errors much better when you start reading the last sentence then the second to last one then the one above it and you keep going up you're not reading for flow this time you're reading to find the arrows you're saying to yourself okay if someone were to read this sentence on its own how would it sound to them remember after you've pre-written and written and revised and rewritten you hear what you want to hear but you're not going to hear your arrows as well so start at the bottom and work your way up to the top once you do that you're on your way to success i know it's a lot of work but one thing i can tell you is that it's a very rewarding lot of work because when you write a document and it's effective you smile at the end of it and your reader also says wow wow my goal is to help students to write in such a way that anytime somebody reads the work that person is blown away and i know what it is like to write a company requesting something that maybe they said no about when i'm done they usually at least say let me talk to this person because it's so impressive and that's what i want for you also that your writing will be so impressive that the person who reads it says who is this person let me see if i can really help it may not happen all the time but 90 95 of the time good writing has that kind of impact and that's what my goal is for you to experience that so i hope you learned something today i consider this to be the fundamentals of business writing this is the kind of lecture that i would give in my class when it's the first class because it introduces students to the requirements of writing of writing in the workplace so if you if you're still here and you're stuck around thank you for staying and i hope you learned something today and i hope that you your main takeaway is that there's a huge difference between academic and creative writing versus business or workplace or practical writing so take into consideration all the things mentioned read the textbook pre-write write and then revise then get someone to do the peer editing for you and then rewrite it one more time reread it from the bottom to the top and then you're ready to submit it you'll be like tanya this is it here's the a give me the a that i expected if you do all of that and you've watched this video which helps you to understand how to differentiate between an a a b and c writing and you're very clear about how to understand the dimensions based on the rubric that we the rubric that we will use then you know what your grade is even before it's returned you will know your grade one of the things i used to do in my face-to-face classes is after telling students after giving this lecture the first time they wrote a document whether it was a letter or a memo i would mark each person's work and i would not assign a grade well i would assign a grade but i would write the grade privately but i never wrote it on their papers i would only give them feedback you know i would say things like parallelism needed here active voice needed here you attitude needs to be clearer purpose statement wasn't written and i would tell them all the things that were missing and then i would give them and then in class i would show them a good piece of writing all right and that hit most of the dimensions and most of the requirements and then i would show them one that didn't hit so i would show them an above right an above average document and i would show them a below average document and then i would return their papers to them and then i would say tell me what grade you think you should get and every time students came up with the right grade their grade always matched mine always and i like doing that assignment i like doing that activity because i think it's good for you to know and in all the years i did it i only had one student once who said he thought it was a nine when i gave him a six a six out of ten he said it should have been a nine out of ten and i said to him i'm so sure about this six please take it to the dean and have her mark it and he never did because i've been teaching for 32 years now and i've never given an a to a c paper or a c to an a paper students don't like their grades sometimes but if you follow the textbook and if you follow the advice given you can get an a but it takes time it takes work and it takes commitment as i spoke about in this video commitment but we don't have the same time we don't all have the same time so we can't all be as committed and i understand that as long as you understand that what you put in is what you get out and that's the beauty of being an adult we can make those decisions we can say you know what i don't need all of this i just need the skills or we can say you know what i'm busy i cannot sacrifice my family time and whatever you you know whatever your reason is you know it and you don't have to apologize because it's your life but make sure that your expectations match the effort you put in so until i see in the next video bye for now and remember like share comment and subscribe there's so much to learn in business writing and the more you learn and the more you practice the better you will be so turn on your notification bell so that every time i release a video you'll be the first to know and you will be constantly improving and improving and improving your writing so i'll see you soon bye for now
2021-03-04 01:16
