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How Do I Decide the Type of Business Writing Training I Need or My Staff Needs?

      Writing skills comprise six areas that require different training methods and content. You must decide which area you or your staff need training in and choose a course that focuses on that area. If you or your staff have needs in more than one area, the training must address the problems differently for each area. A single course in business writing must either focus on one area or have different parts for the different areas.

Each of these six problem areas requires different content and methods:

1. Language errors for nonnative speakers of English More . . .

2. Grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, or spelling errors More . . .

3. Unclear e-mail, memos, letters, or reports More . . .

4. Typos, careless errors, unprofessional wording, and disheveled text More . . .

5. The need for training in a specialized area such as editing, proofreading, grant writing, and so on More . . .

6. Writing that is inappropriate for the reader, purpose, or objectives More . . .

      The Business Writing Center has three individualized courses for nonnative speakers of English that have been very successful.

      Grammar drills do not improve language usage (more on why). A grammar workshop cannot teach correct usage.

      The Business Writing Center has two types of courses devoted to usage: (1) survey courses and (2) individualized courses.

1. Survey courses: BWC100 Basic Grammar for Business and BWC85 Basic Grammar Essentials. In a survey course, every trainee goes through the same lessons to learn about the English usage rules. The trainee takes a pre-test before a lesson to see how much he or she knows about the area of usage. The lessons for the longer, more in-depth BWC100 course require the trainee to read about the area of usage in a grammar textbook. BWC85 is a shorter course, with all of the materials for each area of usage online.

   The survey courses are excellent means of learning the rules for all the primary areas of English usage. However, they do not pinpoint the trainee's individual needs and do not focus on training to take care of the needs.

2. Individualized course: BWC110 Basic Writing Skills Tutorial. This is an individualized course in which the instructor identifies the trainee's specific areas of difficulty in usage from samples of writing, prescribes reading assignments from the grammar text, evaluates the trainee's summaries of the rules and practice activities, and tests the trainee's knowledge in an online test. This highly individualized method of training is very successful in helping trainees learn correct usage.

   This course must be taken over time and requires work on the part of the trainee. Since it is individualized, the trainee may repeat the same course as often as necessary to identify all of the usage problems and learn how to overcome them.

   As with training for nonnative speakers of English, you must be patient with usage training, not expect dramatic results quickly, and realize that achieving 100 percent perfect usage will not be possible for some people, no matter how much or how long we train them.

   The Business Writing Center's highly individualized approach to usage training is the most effective training we are aware of anywhere in the world. It is much more effective than classroom training.

      If a business person writes unclear e-mail, memos, letters, or reports, it is most likely because he or she has not learned the best practices for structuring explicitly clear documents. K-12 schools, colleges, and universities don't teach the skills, largely because the discipline of business writing has only recently defined them. They are explained in the book, Explicit Business Writing: Best Practices for the Twenty-First Century.

      These skills can be taught easily; business people can be certified as competent in the best practices after one course. Courses teaching structure do not include usage training because usage requires focus on a different set of skills.

The Business Writing Center offers four courses that focus on these skills:

1. BWC210 Business Writing Skills. This course teaches 51 guidelines for writing clear e-mail, memos, letters, and reports. It includes four competency examinations requiring writing samples. The trainee reads about the skills required to write clear documents and demonstrates the skills in the competency examinations. The course also includes 12 practice activities that help the trainee learn the skills.

2. BWC95 Business Writing Essentials. The course uses the same training materials as the BWC210 course, but does not include practice activities. It is for business people who don't want to devote the time to practicing the skills and don't need instructor feedback to be sure they can apply the skills in their writing. The course has the same four competency examinations as BWC210, however, that the instructor evaluates.

3. BWC220 Explicit Business Writing. This course uses the textbook, Explicit Business Writing: Best Practices for the Twenty-First Century, and teaches the 39 best practices in the book. The course contains five competency examination writing samples, but no activities because the text is easy to understand and has a large number of examples.

4. BWC225 Explicit Business Writing with Additional Training. This course also uses the textbook, Explicit Business Writing: Best Practices for the Twenty-First Century, and teaches the 39 best practices in the book. However, it contains more intensive training that teaches the skills to a level of mastery that makes them second nature for the trainee. It is suitable for a college-level course in business writing.

   The course contains 17 competency examinations, with several samples in each of the four primary media used in business: e-mail, memos, letters, and reports. It also contains 39 activities, one for each best practice, to ensure that the trainee knows how to apply the best practices at a mastery level.

      If the writer is committed to editing and proofreading his or her work and is attempting to do so but needs skills in editing and proofreading, BWC320 Polishing and Proofreading Your Business Writing teaches the skills of editing and proofreading for business people.

• BWC410 Editing Skills
• BWC430 Grant-Writing Skills
• BWC485 Legal Writing Skills
• BWC440 Proofreading Skills
• BWC450 Public Relations and Copywriting Skills
• BWC420 Research Report Writing Skills
• BWC422 Technical Writing
• BWC460 Writing Computer User Manuals and System Documentation
• BWC425 Writing Clear, Objective Audit Reports
• BWC340 Writing Effective Business Letters
• BWC350 Writing Effective Workplace E-mail
• BWC495 Writing Skills for Technical Support Center Representatives
• BWC360 Writing Successful Business Proposals