How to Teach a College Business Writing Course

December 23, 2015

You have students for only 14 weeks, about 40 actual classroom hours, to teach them business/technical writing. Instead of trying to teach them a little about many things and having them mimic generic print and electronic formats, teach them a few really important fundamental concepts and skills they will cherish as forever knowledge and use for the rest of their lives. Workplace writing is about a few simple principles relentlessly applied. Here's my top 10 list--should keep you and the class plenty busy and excited....

Comment

How Can We Equip Students to Write Well in the Digital Age?

December 23, 2015

GOLF!

We should be teaching workplace writing the way they teach golf. Break it into its parts, explain techniques for each, then practice, practice, practice…on a real golf course!

They don’t teach you golf by setting you up with a program that simulates golf…”Tiger Woods PGA Tour PlayStation 2 Gameplay.” That’s a fun game, but it doesn’t teach you how to golf.

You need to learn to grip the actual club (and adjust the grip for various shots). You need to learn the proper stance for different clubs and different lies. You need to learn the three equal parts of the swing (backswing—“DON’T PICK THE CLUB UP!”; downswing—“START WITH THE HIPS!”; follow-through—“BACK HEEL UP!”) You learn the fade and the draw, the sandwedge, chipping and putting.

The way golf instructors isolate each aspect of golf and give the student specific techniques to manage them all, writing teachers should break workplace writing down to isolate each aspect so students can learn specific techniques to better manage every aspect:

· generating useful reader-based content,

· organizing with the message first then the details,

· designing docs of any kind with the reader’s eye,

· organizing message-first paragraphs,

· structuring sentences the eye-brain system can readily decode,

· using plain English, and

· maintaining correct mechanics.

What follows is my saga as a college business writing teacher who ventured innocently out into the “real world” and back again, and how that trip radically changed my approach to teaching workplace writing. You may need a canteen and some trail mix. Good luck. . . .

Comment

The 4 MOST DANGEROUS MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT WRITING

December 22, 2015

My grad student, Jessica, struggled to write in college. Then she went to work. She tried to apply what she was taught in college about writing to her workplace writing. But she felt anxious and confused. Where to start? How to get over writer’s block? How to impress the Boss? How to impress her customers? After her Boss gave her a low rating on written communication on her annual performance appraisal, she decided to fix her problem. She went back to school, entering the grad program in professional writing at Towson University, where I met her in my business writing class.

When we talked several weeks into the semester, she shared her story with me. She said she felt so relieved to learn what I was teaching her about writing, lessons she found herself applying immediately on the job. I told her that, in my opinion, there’s a dirty little secret about college writing courses. They don’t do much to teach us how to develop useful content for our workplace readers and how to present that information well. The focus is eloquence and make-believe, not everyday practical writing for real people who are busy but need useful information to do their jobs better.

Comment

ONE GREAT WAY TO MAKE WORKPLACE WRITING BETTER/EASIER: MANAGE UP !

October 8, 2015

We know a great way to make workplace writing easier and better. Maybe it can help you….

We met Becky at a writing training we did for a top global professional services company…we’ll call it POSH. Becky spent two years after graduating from a prestigious college earning a Master’s Degree in Public Policy (MPP); she told us at a coffee break that she did extremely well, loved it. Mixed her interests in economics, statistics, policy research, and environmental issues. Crossed disciplines, switching gears at a moment’s notice, always learning something new. Worked in groups, an activity she loved as much as the best artisanal gelato. She said she’d spent a semester in Florence—the bridges, red roofs, the cantuccini with Vin Santo. Visited the Duomo, the Palazzo Vecchio, and the Uffizi. Discovered Tuscany and loved its cuisine, especially the gelato (white chocolate with pistachio sauce).

Comment

1 Comment

THE 10 COMMANDMENTS OF EFFECTIVE WORKPLACE WRITING

October 1, 2015

A Decalogue for workplace writing? Really?

I don't at all mean to depreciate the original עשרת הדברים. But having spent the metaphorical 40 days and 40 nights out in the wild of the workplace, dealing with sentences like this—

Therefore, this improvement is assumed to redistribute the source of the existing passenger generated flows being conveyed by the two existing system branches because of the redistribution of part of the population from the existing Terminal Complex onto the new Concourse. (41 words in the original)

—I feel a revelation coming on. So here are my 10 Commandments for Workplace Writing, with a few annotations.

1 Comment

Comment

The D of I: Our Country's Most Important Audit Report!

September 7, 2015

Performance audit reports, which are always issue-driven (think risk), are declarations built through a series of logical steps, which include identifying appropriate criteria as standards for making judgements, describing condition (what has actually happened), comparing criteria to that condition, and, where there is a gap, stating the effects (consequences) of the gaps, ascertaining the causes of the gaps and, from these causes, presenting recommendations that will resolve the issue.

Comment

THANK YOU, AUDITORS, FOR WHAT YOU DO!

September 5, 2015

To kick off this blog that I hope will be of service to those who write audit reports, I wanted to begin with an appreciation. In 1987, I began working with auditors--now called "analysts"--at GAO, and I've come to admire the good thinking they do, the hard work they put in to get a report out the door, and their usual good humor. I've worked with auditors throughout the country and throughout the world by now. But this brief appreciation really focuses on my admiration for the function all auditors perform.

Comment

GET SMART, FAST!

September 4, 2015

If you don't know him, he's written some great books, which are generally classified as "business books," but they're much more than that...each is different.

Comment

QCG Blog