Business Writing Fall 2017 Blogs

• What stands out in your mind as something important you learned?

I would say the most important thing I’ve learned early on in this class is just how important the phrasing of your message is. I didn’t realize how many different ways there are to phrase a single message, and how much more effective some ways are than others depending on the situation at hand.

In the second week of class we went over certain writing techniques such as the audience benefits, the “you” view and parallelism.  I think that these writing skills would be very important in business writing because we’d like to be very persuasive.  Someone could be very persuasive when they try to make it sound like they have your interest in their writing.  Sounding positive is another good way to persuade people because there is no way you can persuade anyone without any optimism.  For example, one could talk about all the negatives but that probably would not convince anyone, however, if you contrast it with something positive you could leave an impact on someone.  Overall, these chapters and the activities that we did for them was very helpful but I can’t help but feel like this was some common sense stuff or something we learn in ENG 100.

Coming soon!

I’m happy to be a part of our class blog.  It’s a fun tool for me to learn and gain more power.  The power of knowledge!  This is my 2nd try at blog’N.  I know blogs can help me share and communicate with others that have the same interests and I know I can learn from others that blog.  This may sound silly?!  But I am amazed at the way technology blesses me to communicate with the World.   I like finding new ways to impress my kids and grand kids or to keep up with them, more like it!  Ciao =)

Grammar has been and still is a struggle for myself, learning how to construct effective sentences can seem like a foreign language at times as well as other things that relate to grammar. Learning the difference of compound, complex and compound-complex sentences can be hard for me to grasp at times. It is very difficult for myself to notice the four sentence types in the day to day material I read. One day I will understand why writing has so many rules and requirements, but until then all I can do is to continue to practice and get better at writing.

I currently work for a Craft Beer-of-the-month Club and am accountable for the marketing side of the business. Anticipating the audience is something I have to do daily whether its through e-mail, face-to-face conversations or phone calls.  I never really knew the steps of anticipating the audience until taking this class. Personally I did not think it made that big of an impact prior to this class. I had one template email I would tweak a little before sending it to each brewery I have contacted. Doing a little extra research on each brewery and its personnel will help me address the correct crowd instead of using the same template for each brewery. Another thing that was extremely helpful was learning the different ways of addressing a situation, whether it is addressing the situation directly or indirectly. My job mainly requires the direct approach because I want to get straight to the point, which is being interested in purchasing these breweries beers. I do deal with the indirect strategy on occasions, most of the time it is my fault for getting myself in the situation. For example, I like to cut corners sometimes and will unknowingly reach out to a brewery that do not have a high enough rating to be featured in our club. By cutting corners and not checking the rating before reaching out has put me in situations where they were interested and I went back to check their rating and realized it was too low. I then had to use the indirect strategy to pretty much tell them they weren’t good enough, which as you can imagine is not a good feeling.

This summer I started having fun, rooting all sorts of plants.  So, far I have a good collection of white gardenia, avocado, rosemary, hawaiian chili pepper, white tiare, pohinahina, peppermint, green onion,uala (sweet potato).  I started collecting little succulent plants.  One sunday at windward mall’s farmer’s market. I purchased 3 little succulents for $11.  Because the man selling them, told me how easy it is to grow others.  Just pluck a leaf from it and stick it in the soil and water once a week.  Cactus plants need very little water and love lots of sun.  So far I’m doing good with the succulents and actually plucked two leaves, stuck it in the soil.  One died and one is still living.  Then I scored from a garage sale, 3 bowls with 3 to 5 succulents in them for a buck each.  My most recent score, was in my botany class.  I was blessed with a pakalana vine and I’m rooting it now.  Live amazing 24/7! a hui hou

Something that I found interesting in chapter 2 was the power of you versus we. I never realized how effective and different a message could sound to the reciever by simply using you instead of we. I believe the reason for this is because people like to feel included. When I hear a message that speaks to me, i’m more engaged with message and are more likely to respond or react to it. If I hear we, I might think the message is just some vague message sent to everyone. The lesson i’m taking away from this is if I want to capture the receiver or audiences attention, make them feel included and using the word you is just one good way to accomplish that.

During the first day of class, we were split into groups of four and were tasked with building a tower using a strip of tape, spaghetti sticks, and a marshmallow. The purpose of the activity was to see how well we could communicate with each other. I thought this activity was helpful and insightful because it was the first day of class and no one knew each other yet. It was interesting to see how well each group would do considering the circumstances. I thoroughly enjoyed the activity because even though we didn’t know each other within our group, we were able to communicate effectively enough to pull off the win!

So far I am confused as to what to do for this class.  I am new to the whole blogging and clogging thing and don’t quite know what ideas or topics I am going to be writing about. Wanda has been very helpful explaining the assignment and letting me know what is required of me to do the best I can this semester.

Here’s to another interesting semester at WCC and business writing intensive.