Month: October 2017

I got number 2 wrong because for some reason I got the diagram of the buffer-closing stuck in my head and answered false to the question “Bad news, whether in person or in writing, is usually better received when reasons are given first”. I was thinking that the buffer is first so the answer would be false because reasons are given second for example in the next question.

#3 The components of effective negative messages are:

Buffer, reasons, bad news, and closing.

I think I may have gotten the question right if the question stated “Bad news …is better received when reasons are given before the bad news.

For this recall practice test I missed #7 “Business English is a necessary prerequisite for taking this course” I rushed through this question not catching the part where “necessary prerequisite ” is repetitive and stating Business English is a prerequisite for taking this course would be more consise.

One recurring theme I’m learning as we take more of our Recall Practice tests is that I need to read the questions more carefully and think about what the question is asking.

For example question 3 which states: From the perspective of low-context, time-efficient communication preferences, polling the entire workplace via email for a time sensitive decision on the office party menu would be inadvisable because to do so would be

A) too informal

B) too slow

C) not thorough or inclusive enough

D) both B and C are correct

I mistakenly selected not thorough or inclusive enough thinking I selected B) too slow.

Obviously contacting people by email would be inclusive and thorough as you can send a mass email to everyone at once.

 

I also missed #7

T/F Of the options below “our new program will begin on Aug.1 is the most direct opening.

Again its pretty obvious that its  to the point and thus a direct opening compared to the other options.

 

 

To: Weyerman Paper Company Employees
From: Brittany Cook, John Paul Danao, Brandon Najarian and Corey Weaver
Subject: Company Game Night

Dear Valued Weyerman Employees,
We have received your request for spouses or friends to be allowed to participate in Weyerman intramural sports teams. We appreciate all of your consistent, exceptionally hard work. Which is why we can understand that you may not afford additional time away from spending time with your family and friends.

This fall season has been set to accommodate our company games. Over 100 employees currently take part on the eight coed volleyball, softball, and tennis teams, in which the teams only play once a week. The teams were outlined to strengthen workplace friendships, as well as giving employees an opportunity to enjoy their time together. If non-employees were to join, we fear that employee interaction would be limited. Although some members may have a more enjoyable time with spouses or friends included, we are not certain that all employees would. Additionally, if non-employees participated, we would have to create supplementary teams, make changes to the roster and game schedules, and it would increase the amount administrative or equipment costs. Which in turn, could be conflicting for some participants.

Again, we do truly understand the need for social time outside of work. Friends, families, and other guests are very much welcome to attend the games as spectators at all intramural games. Also, the company sponsors a family party during the holidays, as well as the annual company picnic.

Sincerely,
Brittany Cook, John Paul Danao, Brandon Najarian and Corey Weaver

PWC 7

Date: 10/02/2017
To: All WCC Business Writing Students
From: Brittany Cook, John Paul Danao, Brandon Najarian and Corey Weaver
Subject: Composing a Negative Message   

 

Dear Members of the WCC Writing Community,

Often not considered to be of importance, a negative message can play a crucial role in your future employment. Negative messages are often used to professionally convey bad news clearly and completely while emphasizing empathy and sensitivity. The composer of the message also has to remain objective, while giving the impression that they are merely an impartial messenger of the message. Some examples of emails that are considered to be negative messages are a denial letter for a scholarship, employer’s change in policy, and a denial of a request, amongst others. When looking at the following examples, there are a wide variety of approaches being utilized to compose an email regarding a company’s internet and social media policy.

In the opening paragraph of a negative message (often referred to as the buffer), you want to remain positive, convey an essence of appreciation for the reader while also providing a restatement of the facts regarding the situation being discussed. The third example initially opens with a positive statement, again called the buffer. Looking at example one, if you were to read the first paragraph alone, you would have no idea what situation the composer is speaking about. Also, the overall tone of the email isn’t professional and could be interpreted as an informal email being sent to one individual, instead of an entire team.

  The next paragraph is used to explain the reasons for the decision, while not yet revealing what the decision is/was. Again, looking at example three, you will notice that the composer provided reasons for the change in the company’s social media policy. Not only does the composer provide reasons for the decision, but the potential ramifications if corrective measures aren’t taken. When examining example two, however, you will notice that the structure of the paragraph is rather redundant and robotic. Remember that one of the goals of a negative message is to convey the news as concisely as possible, eliminating the potential of follow-up emails with questions.

Now comes the bad news portion of the email. It’s vital to remember that this is the purpose of the email, and you may want to remember who your audience is when composing this portion. Your goal is to reveal the bad news while not emphasizing it, and to provide an alternative or compromise if at all possible. The bad news should also ideally be located in the middle of the paragraph rather than at the beginning. Example three again shows how to put the news into the body of the paragraph while concisely stating the changes. The first example opens the paragraph with the bad news, while all the while maintaining a tone of parental punishment. Example one also used the term “netiquette” with no explanation or demonstrative marks, so it appears to almost be a spelling error. Example two uses vague and ominous threats as motivation for employees to follow the social media policy, providing no alternatives or compromises for the workers. Writing in this tone can give the impression that the company is run as a totalitarian dictatorship, potentially lowering worker morale and creating a division between workers and management.

Finally, the closing of the negative message needs to convey a personalized, positive message. Whether it’s information regarding potential alternatives offered, freebies or good wishes, the goal if your conclusion paragraph is to leave the reader with a sense positivity. Often, the conclusion is also a forward-looking paragraph that may encourage the reader to try again or continue working with you. Again looking at example three, you will see that the last two sentences reiterate the strength of the team as well as a positive outlook for the company’s future. Example two, while providing a concrete date for the start of the new policy, really gives no personalization to the letter and no future outlook. Again, you just delivered potentially devastating news to someone or a group of people. You want to end on a positive note so that the recipient of the message feels as though all factors were taken into consideration and the decision is a just one that does not reflect any personal grievances against the recipient.

Negative messages can be difficult to compose. However, when followed, these simple steps can ensure that a negative message can have a positive outcome.

     

I just finished these and man these were a lot of work.  PWC 9 took me a fair amount of time and I put a lot of effort in it.  It was also nice that by this point the instructions were really clear and I was really familiar with it.  This PWC was like PWC 1, 5, and 7 so had I not had so much of these analyses already it would have took me even longer.

PWC 10 was really similar to the 2nd, 6th and 8th.  I am kind of glad that this time around that we did not have to find our own topic but rather there was 7 to pick from.  This cut down my time significantly because I spend a decent amount of time just trying to find a topic to write about.

I’ll be posting more often with all this stuff we have to do like the sample rough draft examination and those annotated citations or something like that.

1. What are you individually going to contribute to your group’s leadership, work requirements, communication, and decision making (see step 4 above)? What previous experience with group work have you learned from that you can use to make this experience as collaborative and productive as possible?
   • Leadership: I will help the team move in the right direction by staying within the subject and continue to motivate my team members.
   • Work Requirements: We are splitting the work evenly through our individual specialties.
   • Communication: We will establish a group chat to have accessible communication between members.
   • Decision Making: The decisions is up to our leader and we just need to be flexible to work around his choices.

 

1. Explain in your own words your understanding of the formal report project, the peer review evaluation procedure (last page of the Formal Report Project Guidelines/Rubrics) and the step 5 questions above:
   • What aspects of the topic are most important for you to research? Why?
   • What are your best current options for follow-up research on this topic? (For example, new keyword or subject search options, names of experts, or cited studies/books/other sources)

 

The formal report project will help us connect to a target audience and have our information easily be presented by using memos, charts, graphs, and data.

There is also the peer evaluation, where we can evaluate other team members and give them a grade reflecting their contributions.

 

The most important topic in our research in Hawaii’s cost of living vs other states is that the income of Hawaii residents makes it hard to go to school due to the increasing cost of living and tuition.

The best follow-up research would be EBSCO, and IPED.

3. Review the Team Effectiveness Pit Stop form below, then answer this question: What can I do to help my team achieve 7s on the pit stop form when we fill it out in 3-4 weeks?

 

To help my team get all 7s on the pit stop, I will help my team with the best of my knowledge, provide constructive criticism and be open minded.

Looking at this draft, overall it’s pretty difficult to follow at some points due to the wording being used and the overall structure of the paragraphs. For example,  the top paragraph on page 6 says:
“Please note the % of total revenue relates to revenue of total revenue for athletic department and not just the football program.”
I have a hard time understanding this, but if I’m reading it correctly, they’re basically saying that the chart reflects total revenue for the athletic department. If this is the case, it contradicts the previous graph that shows the revenue from football alone. On top of that, the graphs don’t compare all of the same universities, so the data given has no correlation.

Moving on, pages 7 and 8 totally lost me. I feel like the comparisons are ever-changing, and the writer is comparing apples and oranges. I’ve read these pages 3 times now, and I still honestly have no idea whats going on.

Page 9 opens up with unneeded information. For example,
“A team’s win loss record of course can change every year for example, one year a team’s record can be 7 wins, 5 losses (7-5), another year it being 4-8 or being perhaps 12-0. Every year every team is always looking to get more wins.”
Can’t this be assumed? Why do we need an example of a win-loss record changing? This statement has been said at least 4 times in different variations
“College football is perhaps the most popular college sport in the nation and people, including donors, get heavily interested when they win.”
We get it, wins=$$$.
“…can spark interest in the school with a deep tournament run.”
Not sure whats meant by this, lot’s of sports jargon and verbiage in here that lost me. Page 12 contains lots of repetition, restating why alumni make donations. Overall, page 12 is broken into 3 paragraphs, but realistically, this could have all been said in 2. It gives me the impression that the writer was struggling to reach the page minimum. Page 13, paragraph 2 is again a restatement.  Page 15 first and last paragraphs are essentially the same thing:

“The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has set strict guidelines that define what a booster is and how they may contribute to the athletic department”
“The NCAA has a set of guidelines that it asks it boosters/alumni donors to follow along with the definition of what a booster is and what they may or may not do.”
“The NCAA has specific guidelines that define what a booster is and the “role of a booster” to a given athletic department or team.”

Overall, the only thing I took away from this paper is that college sports require a large amount of money to be competitive. Aside from that, it seemed like the author constantly changed viewpoints, subject matter, and data. That, combined with poor sentence structure and sports jargon and you have one lost reader.

 

1. What are you individually going to contribute to your group’s leadership, work requirements, communication, and decision making (see step 4 above)? What previous experience with group work have you learned from that you can use to make this experience as collaborative and productive as possible?

I am going to contribute to the formal project by putting in my best effort and do the jobs that the rest of my team does not want to do.  For example, if no one wants to be the facilitator, I will be the facilitator.  The work will be divided evenly amongst the four people in my group. I don’t have all the details yet but I think that everyone is going to have one controversy on financial aid to write about for the formal report.  Also, I think that everyone is going to do a slide on their respective controversy about federal financial aid.  A previous experience I had with group work was being in student government in 10^th grade.  I had to facilitate fundraisers and meetings when our president could not make it.  I also have worked in many labs at my time in Windward Community College.  Based off these experiences, I will be able to facilitate and be able to hold my fair share of work.

2. Explain in your own words your understanding of the formal report project, the peer review evaluation procedure (last page of the Formal Report Project Guidelines/Rubrics) and the step 5 questions above:
   1. What aspects of the topic are most important for you to research? Why?
   2. What are your best current options for follow-up research on this topic? (For example, new keyword or subject search options, names of experts, or cited studies/books/other sources)

The formal report project is a multi-part project that consists of a 15-page formal report, a presentation that requires a slideshow with it, a memo and a peer evaluation.  The formal report project will be about a college financing topic.  This can be anything from certain scholarships to financial aid or the GI bill.  The peer evaluation is meant to review how useful you were and the other members of the group were.  The higher the score the more points the group member will get.  This works as a multiplier.  For example, if my group gets a total of 270 points and I get a 90% from the peer evaluation I will get only 243 points or at least that’s how I think it works.

The most important aspects of the topic to research are the controversies and problems about the topic because not everybody knows about the controversies and problems of a topic.  For example, no one would think of financial aid as a topic with issues most would think about the free money that people get from it.  It’s important to know the good and bad about a particular subject.  However, if it’s about a topic that is usually associated with bad news, it would be better in this case to look up the positives of it.

The best follow-up research for federal financial aid would definitely be certain issues such as specific cases, or general issues that a lot of people have ran into.  A new keyword to use would be “problems with financial aid” or “special cases of financial aid”.

3. Review the Team Effectiveness Pit Stop form below, then answer this question: What can I do to help my team achieve 7s on the pit stop form when we fill it out in 3-4 weeks?

I can help my teammates achieve 7s on the pit stop by always encouraging my teammates and never discouraging them.  For example, I will never say that they are stupid.  I will also try to make sure that everyone is on the same page with the goals even if I am not the person who made the goal.  I will also not take complete control of the project nor will I just sit idly by when everyone else is doing all the work.  I’ll make sure that the work is split evenly.  I will also try to make sure that we are all on the same page with the solutions as well and that our solutions incorporate different ideas.  I will give out my honest feedback and receive some in return to make our project as good as it can get.  I don’t think that conflict is going to be too much of an issue in our group but when it does happen it will be resolved very quickly and maturely.  I will listen to everybody’s ideas and make sure that it is understood.  This is one of the ways that we can minimize the amount of conflict that could happen.  Along with listening to other people’s ideas I will trust my teammates in that they will do their part and if this happens conflict will be at a minimum.  If there is a better way to operate or if there is a change in plan that makes us more efficient then we will follow through with it.  I will follow through with this by pitching out new ideas and listening to my teammates ideas.

Personally, I am not comfortable in a leading position as I don’t feel I have enough confidence at times. It is something i’ll definitely need to work on, possibly even within this group project. Although I’m not strong in leading, I am strong within fulfilling requirements, communicating, and assisting with decision making. I find that discussing until a consensus is reached may be the best, most efficient way. This way group members can get all their ideas out, and come up together with the best solution. Also, through past experiences, staying up-to-date or possibly even ahead of due dates/schedule allows the project to run more smoothly with minimal errors or conflicts.
My understanding of the formal research project, is that as a team we are to compose a memo addressing an overview of the research topic we’ve chosen. Currently, to my knowledge we will be conducting the research on the cost of living in Hawaii as opposed to other states. Our team has not chosen a specific state to compare with just yet, but I am sure the information will be interesting regardless. I feel the entire topic in and of itself is important to research, to gain knowledge and a better understanding of the seemingly insufficient funding residents receive when compared elsewhere. As for the best current options for follow-up research on this topic, I would say we have EBSCO and google (while verifying reliability of sites).
To help my team achieve 7’s on the pit stop form, I will (1) encourage learning and development of myself and team members. All while making good use of our different abilities, knowledge, and experiences. (2) Ensuring our goals are clear to all and we care about the goals while remaining committed. (3) Control is shared within the group, and everyone takes initiative. (4) The team comes to a consensus on decisions, and different ideas are integrated. (5) The team takes and gives feedback on what we are doing well or areas that we need to improve. (6) If conflicts come up, we openly express them and address them accordingly. (7) We will listen attentively, understand and are understood. (8) We can trust in each other, and openly express our feelings. (9) We are innovative, flexible and diverse. We encourage trying different things and experimenting.