 Lecture 45, As-Salaam-Alaikum. Welcome to the last lecture of the virtual university's course on business and technical communication. In this course, we've reviewed all types of business and technical communication, including written and oral communication. Today, we're going to briefly review and revise all that you've done on this course. We looked at written communication, the importance of writing in a professional environment, and the different forms of writing. We also looked at some guidelines that need to be kept in mind while writing. We also looked at the different types of oral communication, which included extemporary, impromptu, memorization, and the reading methods. We looked at modes of delivery, and I also discussed some delivery guidelines with you. We also discussed that it was important to keep your reader in mind when you were writing, and we started off by looking at two main types of writing, resumes and letters. For resumes, we decided that the plan for writing resumes was that first you would define your objectives, then you would plan, then draft, evaluate, and then revise your resume. As far as writing a letter of application was concerned, which was the other type of writing where you would be keeping your reader in mind. You needed to define your objectives, plan, draft, evaluate, and revise as well. When you need to consider your reader, then you need to undertake audience analysis and you need to target your audience by identifying audience type, characteristics, and their level of expertise. You will determine your audience's needs by assessing their expertise and their purpose in reading the document. You also need to determine document density to see if it is appropriate to your audience level and need or not. We also looked at defining objectives. We looked at the fact that we needed to keep in mind document purpose when you were defining objectives and that there were two types of purposes, implicit purpose and explicit purpose, that was stated indirectly or not clearly and a purpose that was stated clearly for the purposes of whatever it is that you were writing. And also, what was the need of a particular document? You need to know the need of a document so that you can analyze your audience better. The way to define your objectives was that you need to identify the tasks that will help your readers perform while they read. You also need to tell how you want to change the reader's attitudes and learn about your reader's important characteristics. You also need to learn who all your readers will be. When trying to define your objectives, if you fill out the sample worksheet that we looked at, that will help in defining your objectives and you also need to learn the importance of appropriateness in business and technical communication so that you can write in an appropriate manner according to the objective that you have in mind. We talked about the key fundamentals of communication out of which we talked specifically about appropriateness, accuracy, clarity, conciseness and coherence. We also talked of the seven C's of effective communication and here I will give most emphasis to clarity. In order to be clear, in order for your message to come across clearly to your reader, you need to keep in mind the five W's who, what, where, when and why the communication is taking place and then answer all these questions to yourself so that your communication can be clear. Also, you need to give extra information when it is desirable so that the clear meaning comes across. In order to be clear, you also need to use one word in place of a phrase maybe or one sentence in place of two sentences so that your communication is concise and your communication comes across better to the reader and you need to read out aloud for wordiness. For conciseness, you need to omit outdated trite expressions and ask yourself is the material really relevant. Look for unnecessary repetition and see if the same idea or word appears too often then you need to delete it. You also need to see your material from the reader's point of view. Keep have the U attitude. Remember that U is more desirable than I or we in most instances. Readers like to see the benefits that they can have from your message. So the benefits that you are giving the reader need to be a prominent part of the message. You have to show your reader what is their benefit in reading the message. You have to keep your message precise. You have to see if what you are saying is correct, if it is clearly expressed in a few words or not. You have to see if you are using an active voice or a passive voice. With an active voice, your message is more direct, clear and concise. You also need to see if there are action verbs rather than nouns. Is the action present in verbs than in nouns? If you convert your nouns into verbs, it will become difficult to understand the meaning. Try to use verbs as verbs and actions are expressed through verbs and not through nouns. Also, try to use vivid image building words. But when you are doing them, don't overdo them. In business writing, use vivid image building words but use them sparingly to give an effect. Not that all the words in business writing are very vivid. Your writing will not look so professional. Your writing needs to be concrete and for that you need to choose words that are as precise and as concrete as possible. Select words that have a high sense of appropriateness for the reader. Opt for familiar words, ones that are not pretenses. Limit the average sentence to 17 to 20 words and insert no more than one main idea into a sentence. Also arrange words in such a way so that the main idea occurs early in a sentence. In the beginning of a sentence, the reader gets the main idea. Now that was a quick round up of the things that we talked about when we talked of the 7 C's of business communication. Let's look at different types of business messages and how we decided that we would plan them. When we talked about the planning of business messages, we talked about the process of composing the business messages. We described the basic tasks. We talked about the general and specific purposes of the business messages. When you write a business message, you have to define its general purpose in your mind. You also have to define the specific purpose of the message and test your purpose. You will also develop an audience profile keeping in mind the questions that we looked at during the audience analysis. You will analyze their needs. In a business message, you will establish your main idea. You will choose according to which channel you want to communicate the business message and how to write the message for the particular audience. You will have a main idea and a purpose. You will also have some needs for your audience. By keeping in mind the message, you will decide how to formulate the message. You will have to write a letter, write a report, write a memo, send a message through fax. You will have to decide the medium of the message. Now, we will compose the message. Once you have planned everything, you will have to compose the message according to the medium of the message. It is important to identify the characteristics of a well-organized message. We also talked about why organization is important to both the audience and the communicator. The way you organize your message, it will be easy for you to write and it will be easy for the reader to understand the message. We also talked about organization in detail about how to organize your message and why. We also talked about breaking your main idea into sub-divisions. You also need to decide when composing a business message whether you will arrange your ideas in the direct or indirect order depending on the possible reaction of the audience. If it is to be a good news message, then you will use the direct order. And for example, if it is to be a persuasive or a bad news message, then you would use the indirect order. You will also compose a message using a style and tone that is appropriate to your subject, purpose, audience and format. And you will use the U article to interest the audience in your message. Once you have composed your business message, then you need to revise your business message before sending it to the reader. And in the revision phase, you will edit your message for content and organizational style and readability. You will also choose the most correct and most effective words to make your point. If you feel that you do not have appropriate words, then you will change them. You will insert those words which are more effective. And this is a very normal thing that in the editing phase, in the revision phase, the words should be changed. You will also in this stage rewrite your sentences to clarify the relationships amongst the ideas and to make your writing more interesting. In the revision phase, you will identify the different elements of your paragraphs. And you will see that your own paragraph matches the details with the topic sentences. And you will choose the best design for written documents. Whatever design it is that you want, whatever layout you want your document to have. You will identify the different elements of a paragraph. You will see if your topic sentences match with the detail that is given within the paragraphs. And you will choose the best design for written documents. If need be, then you will rewrite paragraphs using appropriate development techniques. We talked about different development techniques, different paragraph development styles. According to your purpose, you will choose a paragraph style. And according to that paragraph design, you will frame your paragraphs. If you feel that your paragraph development is not appropriate, then you can change your development. And then you will also prove read your message for mechanics and format. When we talked generally about how business messages are composed, planned and revised. After that, we talked about different types of business messages. The first one is about memorandum. Just to remind you, memoranda are brief, informal reports that are used to establish a record. They generalize the communication process by transmitting the message from one or more authors to one or more recipients. You must have seen that if you are in a business situation, in a company, many memorandums are exchanged. And typically, emails are used as memoranda. Another form of business communication is letters. You will use letters to communicate outside your organization. It is less important that you write a letter to someone inside your organization. When you want to communicate inside the organization, you generally send a memoranda. And if you want to communicate outside, you send a letter. Letters are an essential part of all business and technical communication. Because they are more formal and more reliable than email. And they are more precise and permanent than telephone or face-to-face conversations. So, the art of letter writing is very important. The different types of letters that you can write in a business or technical situation, primarily you can write letters of inquiry. We looked at the format of a letter of inquiry and we talked about the different components of an inquiry letter which included a head, the body, the footer and headings. We also looked at letters of recommendation and the format of a letter of recommendation. The different components of a letter of recommendation are, again, like the letter of inquiry, the head, body, footer and headings. We also looked at different methods of obtaining letters of recommendation. If you want to write a letter to someone, how do you write it? And if you want to write a letter of recommendation for someone, how do you write it? We also looked at those guidelines. Then we talked about direct requests. How will you write direct requests? In a business situation, there are a lot of times when you need to make requests and they are generally done through writing. We talked about the fact that you need to follow the customs of your audience when making requests across cultural boundaries. If you are sending someone a request from your culture, then the audience you have to follow their customs, the politeness norms they have for writing, you have to follow them so that they see your request more favorably. Also, in any request, whether it is within your culture or to another culture, you will state the main idea of each direct request that you write and you will indicate your confidence that your request will be filled. You will also provide sufficient detail for the reader to be able to comply with your request. It is not that you have just requested, but the detail is not that sufficient and those who are going to read your request cannot complete your request because they do not have all the information. If you are requesting something, then give proper detail so that your request can be accepted. And also, if there are any complicated requests, then clarify them with lists and tables and close your request with a courteous request for specific action. In the end, tell me what specific action you want so that the request you have to follow is available in the closing. We also looked at routine good news and good will messages and we talked of the fact that you need to decide when to write a routine good news or good will message and that will depend on the situation. In every situation, you will not write a good news message. There are different situations. According to that, you will see what kind of message you have to write. You will adjust the basic organizational pattern of a letter to fit the type of message that you are writing. If need be, then you will add resale and sales promotion material when appropriate. Also, when you are writing such messages, you will encourage your reader to take desired action just like you said in your direct request. Similarly, when you are writing a good news or good will message if you want the audience to take action after listening to that, then you will clearly state it. Also, we looked at how to write credit approvals and recommendation letters. If you are giving credit to someone, then you will write the letters and if you are recommending credit to someone, then you can also write those letters. These are specialized messages and other specialized messages include instructions, news releases and good will letters. We also looked at how to write those. After this, we talked of writing bad news messages. It is easy to write a good news message. Even the reader is happy to read it. When you write, if you follow a format, you can tell your good news directly. But to write bad news messages, you need more tact and diplomacy. You need to choose correctly between indirect and direct approaches to bad news. You need to decide when to use the direct approach, when to use the indirect approach. Generally, in conveying a bad news message, you will use the indirect approach. You also need to establish the proper tone from the beginning of the message by trying to use a neutral lead-in to put your audience in an accepting mood. If you want to give bad news to your audience, then try to use the introductory sentence from which the lead-in to your bad news is called neutral. Don't give bad news to your audience. Because if the audience gets bad news in the beginning, then they may not read your letter. Also, try to present bad news in a reasonable and understanding way. Write messages that motivate your audience to take constructive action. If there is any bad news, then write it in such a way that your readers shouldn't demotivate. In fact, if you want to take action, in order to improve something, then you can do the same. Also, try to close your message so that your audience is willing to continue a business relationship with your firm. It is not that they are disheartened by listening to your bad news message that they should not do business with your firm but you should finish your message in such a way that they are still willing to do business with you. However, the message they are getting is not that happy. We also talked about persuasive messages. Persuasive messages are those where you want to persuade your readers to do some work. You will strengthen your persuasive messages with an appropriate appeal and you will gain credibility by supporting your persuasive message with relevant facts. We also talked about a plan which is called AIDA Plan which means that you will organize your persuasive message by keeping your attention, interest, desire and action in mind. We also looked at writing a message persuading your audience to take action or to grant you an adjustment and how to design a sales letter around selling points and benefits. After this, we talked about short reports. How will you write a short report? First of all, we identified the qualities of good reports and proposals and then we talked about the fact that you need to choose the proper length and format of your report and decide when to use the direct versus the indirect order. We talked about informational or analytical reports organization and we also talked about the fact that you need to establish an appropriate degree of formality in a report. You will use headings, lists, transitions, openings and summaries to guide the readers through the report. Now, how will we plan the long reports? If you remember that we said that when you start writing long reports the first problem that needs to be solved is to define the report that we will write and the research that we will do and the analysis that we will do what is the problem and the solution that we will get. So, once you have identified the problem that has to be solved then you identify and analyze the issues that have to be analyzed during your study. First, you will see what was the problem and what are the issues that you need to analyze. Then you will analyze what are the issues and how we can solve them and then you will start to correct your data by keeping the problems and issues in mind. You will also prepare a work plan for conducting your investigation. You will plan the necessary steps. You will estimate their time and decide on the sources that you need to investigate. Whatever material you need how will you do it? What steps will be done? How much time will it take and what sources of information you will use. When you are planning long reports you will organize the research phase of the investigation including the identification of secondary and primary sources of data. You will draw sound conclusions and develop practical recommendations and you will also have a final outline and visual aid plan for the report. We also talked about the necessary parts of a formal report and we looked at the different types of visual aids that I used to support the text of your report. We also talked about which order you will assemble so that they become a logical sequence. We talked about how to prepare and assemble all the parts of a formal proposal as well and we talked about critiquing formal reports that are prepared by someone else. We talked about general reports we looked at the different varieties of report writing situations which situations and in which you need to write a report and how you readers want to use the information that you provide. We also talked about the questions that readers ask most often. We looked at some sample outlines and sample reports. In terms of general reports we saw a superstructure of the report in which the structure of a general report is generally introduced method of obtaining facts is a section is a section of facts is a discussion section of conclusions and recommendations is written. We also looked at empirical research reports what are the typical writing situations what are the questions that readers commonly ask when we are reading empirical research reports and then we looked at a superstructure which fits on empirical research reports. In this superstructure we saw that in empirical research reports there is an introduction of the research defined and then we talk about the method then we have a discussion a conclusion and recommendations. We also talked about headings how headings are written and what needs are to be written in a consistent form and then we also saw a sample research report. In terms of reports we also talked about feasibility reports and again we looked at typical writing situations when would you typically be asked to write a feasibility report we also discussed some questions that readers ask most often and we looked at a superstructure for feasibility reports. In this superstructure we saw that in feasibility reports there is an introduction in which criteria are discussed and in this section we look at the two ways of presenting criteria the importance of presenting criteria early we also talked about the different sources of your criteria and the four common types of criteria. Following the section on criteria the feasibility report has a section which talks about the method of obtaining data and then there is an overview of alternatives. Feasibility reports also have an evaluation section and to write that you need to choose carefully between alternating and divided patterns to dismiss obviously unsuitable alternatives. Also you need to put your most important point first because this is the point on the basis of which your readers are going to make their decision. We also looked at progress reports and typical writing situations for progress reports and the questions that readers ask most often we talked about the fact that progress reports deal with the readers concerns about the future the super structure for progress reports would be such that they would have an introduction a section about facts and discussion in which you will answer your readers questions and provide the appropriate amount of information you will also organize the discussion according to the important facts and findings and you will make sure that you are emphasizing the important findings and the problems. You will have a conclusion section and also a note on the location of conclusions and recommendations. We also talked about the tone in progress reports and looked at a sample progress report. After this we talked about proposals what are the different writing situations when you need to write proposals what are the different types of proposals that you can write. I told you that you need to look at proposal readers as investors because if you are proposing something then chances are that the readers will be investing their time and money in making sure that you can actually do what you propose. You will write a proposal when you are telling someone that this is your idea and now they have to give you time or money so that you can give the idea to Amal. We looked at the questions that readers are most likely to ask when they are reading a proposal and the strategy of these conventional superstructure for proposals. The key elements are introduction problem and in the problem section we looked at when the readers define the problem for you, when readers provide a general statement of purpose and when you must define the problem yourself. There is also the section on objectives the product, the method, the resources that will be needed the schedule in which whatever project you are proposing will be completed, what management it will involve and what costs it will entail. After this we talked about instructions and how to write instructions. As we have talked about different writings, some specific situations mean instructions are written or different instructions so we looked at the different variety of instructions and I mentioned that there were three important points to remember, one, that instructions shape attitude two, that good visual design is important and in visual design we talked of page design and visual age and third, that testing is often indispensable. We looked at the conventional superstructure for instructions and discussed that important things to be kept in mind while writing instructions were the subject, aim, intended readers, scope, organization, usage, motivation and background. We also looked at the use of visual aids in business and technical communication. You need to look for places where visual aids will help you achieve your communication objectives. Wherever you are, you don't need visual aids. You will choose your visual aids as appropriate to your objectives and you will make your visual aids easy to understand and use and also you will fully try to fully integrate your visual aids with your pros. Whatever visual aids you have used, you can relate with your pros. Your pros, your text will be a reference for visual aids. We talked of creating 12 different types of visual aids which included tables, bar graphs, pictographs, line graphs, pie charts, photographs, drawings, diagrams, flow charts, organizational charts, schedule charts and budget statements. We talked about these 12 types of visual aids, how do we design them and how do we use them. After this discussion of visual aids we moved to writing specifications and analysis reports. We examined the types of specifications common to the computer industry and we also examined the importance and main features of analysis reports. We also saw the terms or conventions differ, but a general framework of analysis reports is one. When we talked about all different types of business communication, different types of reports, instructions, analysis reports, specifications, long and short reports, letters, memos, after this discussion we talked about common problems. What are the common problems in any type of writing? There are some other types of writing, creative writing, but specifically in business or technical writing what are the types of problems that the writers commonly face. These common problems are writer's block when the writer understands what to write, lack of a well defined purpose, poorly analyzed structure, lack of confidence, organizational problems in the format, in your structure your text has problems in the organization due to which whatever your writing is, it is against you and it is against you to write. Then other problems include punctuation problems where you have not used punctuation markers properly and because of that the meaning can change. Readability problems are very commonly as do problems with writing style. We also looked at problems with organizational logic. There are many times when people write information when they organize it they do not organize it in a logical order and it is against the reader. And also there may be problems with mechanical development of the topic. The topic sentence or the main idea development is not on paper and because of that in reading and in organizing your writing there may be problems. We also looked at finally that common problems also occur with writer style and the quality of the manuscript if your final manuscript has poor quality then that too is a very common problem and because of that whatever your writing is after looking at the common problems we started reviewing the language that is commonly used in writing and also we looked at language with specific reference to different units of writing. First of all we saw the paragraph that what problems can be in the paragraph. Main problem is with paragraph unity where we need to make sure that topic sentences relate to the main idea and that whatever detail is given within the paragraph relates to the topic sentences. Another important thing to keep in mind when writing paragraphs is paragraph coherence. The information given in your paragraphs whether it is coherent or not. Have you used transitional devices or not? Have you used transitional words or phrases or not? We have also seen these phrases. We also looked at linking pronouns and how linking pronouns can add to paragraph coherence. Also the repetition of key words can lead to more coherent paragraphs. We talked about paragraph development that different ways can be developed and those different patterns included exemplification narration process description comparison and contrast analogy cause and effect classification and division definition paragraphs analysis and enumeration. In different ways a paragraph can be developed and one of them can be combined and developed depending on the purpose of that paragraph and depending on the main idea of that paragraph. After looking at paragraphs we then looked at sentences. We started moving down to the micro level and started looking at sentences and how they are structured and how sentences can be improved. In sentences common problems are stacked modifiers or nouns whereas a lot of modifiers are connected to a noun and it is not clear what is being talked about. Another common problem is also that of wordiness where writers tend to use too many words or words which are too heavy in meaning also the use of passive voice and active voice and how that can help in sentence construction nominalization we discussed unnecessary repetition and unnecessary words or phrases we also talked about overloaded sentences and sentence fragments overloaded sentences in which a lot of information is given in one sentence and the reader cannot absorb and sentence fragments look like sentences but they are not grammatically because they have subject missing or verb missing. Other common problems with sentences include comma splice fused sentences they can also be a problem of agreement within a sentence and this problem can be between subject verb agreement or pronoun and its antecedent and the agreement between the pronoun and its antecedent Sentences can often suffer from lack of parallelism where if ideas are mentioned then their grammatical construction is not parallel. To make them better phrases or ideas construction can be done in parallel form choppy sentences can also cause problems in writing and reading where the sentences are very very short sentences which are put together and which are written all together and this can be remedied by converting too many short sentences into longer sentences Sentences also suffer from problems with misplaced modifiers and with dangling modifiers and we talked about how to correct those I also mentioned that you should not use double negatives in your sentences because the use of double negatives creates a positive image. Regarding sentences we talked about shifts that if you tense, mood, person or voice shift inappropriately then your sentence's grammatical structure gets damaged and the effectiveness of the sentence ends. Also these sequence of tenses has to remain right you need to be sure that whatever tenses you are using actually refer to the time span that you are talking about. Also if the pronoun reference is unclear or too broad then it becomes difficult for the reader to understand what is being talked about. After paragraphs and sentences we discussed words and punctuation when we talk about words we have to see what kind of language we will use in our writing that our right idea should be communicated We talked of abstract and general language and vague and ornate language and the benefits and disadvantages of each type. We also talked of the use of technical terms and how to use technical terms in writing and we talked about trying to avoid biased language. Good writers avoid sexist language agist language language biased against people with disabilities and ethnically and racially biased language. When we looked at punctuation we talked of the use of the period or full stop and also the use of commas. In commas we looked at using commas to separate introductory elements coordinating conjunctions joining independent clauses the use of commas to show elements in a series coordinate modifiers parenthetic elements elliptical constructions and we also looked at specialized use of commas we looked at superfluous commas and the placement of commas with other punctuation marks. Amongst other punctuation marks we looked at the use of the colon the semicolon, the question marks exclamation marks and apostrophes. We also looked at how to use quotation marks hyphens parenthesis and brackets. After this we talked about mechanics. What are the other things in our writing what are the other mechanics which are the same in every situation. We looked at how to capitalize letters when it was appropriate to capitalize letters specifically with reference to headings and titles. We also looked at the appropriate and correct use of italics we looked at how to write and include abbreviations in our writing and the use of acronyms. We also looked at numbers how to use refer to numbers in your writing how to number pages in your writing and enumeration the use of symbols equations and also how to use the correct spelling. We talked about the different types of spellings the British and the American spelling and what was more appropriate for business writing. After this when all the writing ended in our course we started listening and spoken skills and we talked about listening and interviewing. We talked about applying the communication process to oral communication and we discussed what skills were needed in being an effective listener. We also identified nine common types of business interviews obviously in a business situation in a technical and business situation you will be involved with interviews either you will be conducting interviews or you will be the interviewee. So you also need to be aware of the nine different types of interview situations and what type of language and what kind of communication norms are expected in each situation. With reference to interviews we have talked about how to plan interviews and how to conduct meetings we defined four types of interview questions and we also clarified when to use each type. We also looked at how groups make decisions and what preparations and duties are necessary for productive meetings. We talked about the speeches or presentations and in that we categorized speeches and presentations according to their purpose. We talked about analyzing the audience for the speeches and presentations and the different steps that were required in planning a speech or presentation along with developing presentation. In development we talked about speech or presentation introduction, body or conclusion. How will we develop it? Especially a long formal presentation. We also talked about selecting and designing and using the appropriate visual aids for various types of speeches and presentations. In this we looked at different types of visual aids and different media and what are the different media that we can use in the presentations for visual aids and which medium is more appropriate for presentation and information. We also talked about effective ways of delivering your speech or presentation and how to handle audience questions effectively. So with this we've come to the end of this course on business and technical communication. We hope that you have benefited from the course and I wish you the best in your future endeavors. If you have any questions you know you can always email us the address is as always englishatvu.edu.pk I wish you all the best Allah Hafiz