Business and Technical English

LESSON 1

INTRODUCTION TO BUSINESS & TECHNICAL

COMMUNICATION

Outline
• Introduction to Business & Technical Communication
• Books & Materials
• Modules
• Importance of Business & Technical Communication
• Types of Communication

Introduction to Business & Technical Communication

The main objective of this course is to equip the students with skills that will enable them to
communicate clearly and concisely in diverse business situations. The students will learn the
importance of planning and organizing effective written messages. The course is divided into
two sections:

1. Written Communication
2. Oral Communication

Written communication will cover planning, structures, and stylistic issues. The students will
learn to write memos and letters, proposals, short and long reports, and procedure & policy
documents. Moreover, the students will learn to simplify complex information through editing
and revising for enhancing their ability to create powerful documents to sell their ideas. The oral
communication section will cover planning and execution of effective presentations; group
behavior, planning and conducting effective meetings.

Books & Materials

• The Mayfield Handbook for Technical Writing

http://www.mhhe.com/mayfieldpub/tsw/home.htm
• Business Communication Today by Bovee, C.L. & Thill, J.V.

Modules

Module 1: Basics of Effective Technical and Business Communication

Module 2: Forms of Written Communication: Reports, Proposals, Letters, Memos, Applications,
Resumes, Instructions, and Specification documents.
Module 3: Research &Writing
Module 4: Oral Communication

Importance of Business & Technical Communication

Learning ‘Business & Technical Communication’ helps a person to identify different roles at
workplace. For instance, you will need to identify your two roles at work. As a specialist, you

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need to generate ideas which will be potentially useful. Secondly, you need to share the results of
your ideas with co-workers, customers, etc. as a communicator.

Example
Naila, a newly hired dietitian, must communicate to make the work valuable to her employer, at
a large hospital. She has devised a way to reorganize the hospital kitchen that saves money, etc.
Her insights will benefit the hospital only if they are communicated to someone who has the
power to implement them, such as the kitchen director.

Writing is critical to your success. As a college graduate, you will need to spend an average of 20
percent of your time at work writing. That comes out to one out of every five-day work week.

A graph plotted for percentage of hours spent versus the number of people who
responded for the survey. The study was conducted for a total number of 896 students in
the US Universities.

Besides enabling you to do your job, writing well can bring you many personal benefits
as well:
• Recognition in the form of praise
• Raises
• Promotions

In many organizations, the communication with the upper management is not feasible. In
such a company, your memos, reports, and other writings may be the only evidence. They
only have specimens of your good written work as either a specialist or a communicator.

Writing is an important responsibility of mangers who have to communicate a wide

variety of messages to those working above and below them. Consequently, employers
look for writings when considering people for advancement.

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In a study, 94 percent of the graduates from seven departments that send students to
technical writing classes reported that the ability to "write well" is of "some" importance
to them. Furthermore, 58 percent said that it is of great or critical importance to them.

In a survey of people listed in the "Engineers of distinction", 89 percent said that the
writing ability is considered when a person is considered for advancement.

Survey of people listed in the "Engineers of distinction" plotting the importance of writing skills
to people versus the number of people who responded.

In addition to bringing you recognition, writing well at work can bring you personal satisfaction
too. It will enable you to make an important impact. To succeed in any endeavors during your
professional career, you will need to influence people's opinions, actions and decisions mostly
through your writing skills.

Writing at work differs from writing at school

To write successfully at work, you will need to develop new writing skills and even new ways of
thinking about writing. That’s because writing at work place differs in some very fundamental
ways from writing done at school.

Purposes of Writing
As a student, you communicate for educational purposes, for example, writing term papers or
taking a written exam, etc. In contrast, as an employee, you will communicate for instrumental
purposes. Most of your communications will be designed to help your employer achieve
practical business objectives.

At school, where your aim is to show how much you know, one of your major writing strategies
is to write as much as you can about your subject. At work, your communications should only
include the information your readers need. Extra information would only clog your readers’ path
resulting in:

o decreased efficiency

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o increased frustration

Audience
• At school your interaction is only with one person, the instructor. In contrast at work, you
will often create communications that will address a wide variety of people with different
backgrounds.
• The use they will make of your information.
• The kinds of professional and personal concerns they will bring to your presentation.

Example
Consider the report in which Naila will present her recommendations for improving the hospital
kitchen. Her recommendations might be read by her supervisor Mr. Nadeem who will want to
know what measures he will have to take in order to follow her recommendations. The vice
president of finance, Mr. Altaf, will want to verify the cost estimates that Naila includes. The
director of purchasing, Mr. Chauhan, will need to know about the new equipment he will need to
order. The head of personnel, Miss Sara, will want to learn whether she needs to write any new
job descriptions. And lastly, to assure the kitchen staff that their new work assignment will treat
them fairly. So, writing for such a large and diverse audience requires skills that are not needed
when writing only to your instructor.

Types of Communication
People at work write different types of writing for communication than those written at schools.
Instead of term papers and exams, they write such things as:

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• Memos
• Business letters
• Instructions
• Project proposals
• Progress reports

Each on-the-job communication has its own conventions. To write successfully at work, you will
need to learn how to construct these kinds of communication.

Ownership
Ownership of a writer’s work is very important. While at school your communication only
belongs to you, at work however, your communication will belong only partly to you. It will
belong to your employer. What you write at work represents not only you but also your
department or your employer.

Example
If you write a letter or report to a customer, the customer views it as an official communication
from your employer. If you write a proposal, your employer will get the contract or lose it.

Two other situations are fairly common at work. Employees often work on committees that write
reports, proposals, and other documents collaboratively. The final version cannot be accredited
to only one individual.

People often write communication that is sent under someone else’s name. It is common for
departmental reports to be signed by the Head of Department, even though they are written by
the staff members.

To succeed in a job, you will need to learn to write under the circumstances in which your
employer claims ownership of your communication. It is absolutely essential to think constantly
about your readers.

• Think about what they want from you and why?

• Think about the ways you want to affect them.
• Think about the ways they will react to what you have to say.
• Think about them as if they were right there in front of you while you talked
together. The communication must affect the individual people you are
addressing in specific ways.

Example
If Naila’s proposal of modifying the hospital kitchen explains the problems created by the
present organization in a way that her readers find compelling, if it addresses the kinds of
objections that her readers can relate to, if it reduces the reader’s sense of being threatened by
suggesting improvements to a system that they set up, then it may succeed.

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On the other hand, if Naila’s proposal leaves the readers confused, and fails to persuade them, it
will make Naila seem like a pushy person who has overstepped her appropriate role. As you
write in a professional environment, you need to remember three things:

1. Readers create meaning.

2. Readers’ responses are sharpened by the situation.
3. Readers react on a moment-by-moment basis.

Readers create Meaning

Instead of receiving the message, people interact with the message to create meaning. While
reading, we build larger structures of knowledge from small fragments of sentences. These
structures are not the words we have just read but our own creation.

Readers’ responses are shaped by the situation

Responses to a communication are shaped by a total situation surrounding the message such as
the readers’ purpose of reading, their perceptions of the writer’s aims, their personal interests
and stake in the subject discussed, and their past relations, if any, with the writer.

Readers react on a moment-to-moment basis

On job, people react to each part of the memo, report or other business communication as soon
as they come to it.

Exercises
1. Find a communication written by someone who has the kind of job you want. Explain its
purpose from various points of view of both the writer and the readers. Describe some of the
writing strategies the writer has used to achieve those purposes.

2. Find a piece of writing that you believe to be ineffective. (You might look for an unclear set
of instructions or an unpersuasive advertisement of some business or a technical product.)
Write a brief analysis of three or four “reading moments” in which your interaction with the
text is in a way that inhibits the author’s desired results.

3. Now analyze an effective piece of writing. This time, write about three or four “reading
moments” in which you interact with the text in a way that helps the author bring about the
desired result.

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