Overview of Week Two

Overview of This Week’s Assignments

This week you will practice revising and editing written business communication. You will share a collaborative Google Doc with your classmates that includes the draft introduction of your Final Project Business Report. You will review another student’s draft and receiving constructive feedback on your draft.

Overview of This Week’s Content

Written communication involves the same eight basic elements as oral communication, but it is often asynchronous. These eight elements are the source, the receiver, the message, the channel, feedback, the environment, the context, and interference. Asynchronous communication means that it is not possible for the receiver to immediately respond. This is is how printed letters have worked for centuries and this is even how e-mail, as instantaneous as it may seem, works today. A telephone conversation or video chat is synchronous, but letters, e-mail, text messages, and even online chat are asynchronous.

Success in writing comes from good habits: reading, writing (especially targeted practice), and critical thinking. Good writing is characterized by correctness, ease of reading, and attractiveness; it also meets reader expectations and is clear, concise, efficient, and effective. Rhetorical elements (logos, ethos, and pathos) and cognate strategies, or ways of promoting understanding (clarity, conciseness, arrangement, credibility, expectation, reference, tone, emphasis, and engagement), are goals that are achieved in good business writing. Proofreading and design put the finishing touches on a completed document.