customizable courseware

Advanced Writing Skills

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Agenda8:30-8:45 Session One: Introduction and Course Overview8:45-9:00 Icebreaker: Top Ten Challenges9:00-10:15 Session Two: The Three Cs10:15-10:30 Break10:30-11:15 Session Three: Grammar and Writing Mechanics11:15-11:45 Session Four: Determining Readability 11:45-12:00 Morning Wrap-Up12:00-1:00 Lunch1:00-1:15 Energizer: Almanac1:15-2:30 Session Five: Writing Letters2:30-2:45 Session Six: Dealing with Specific Requests 2:45-3:00 Session Seven: E-mail Etiquette3:00-4:15 Session Eight: Business Documents4:15-4:30 Workshop Wrap-Up

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Session One: Course Overview

• Discuss your writing challenges.• Learn how to make your writing clear, concise, and

correct.• Improve sentence construction and paragraph

development.• Identify some ways to make your writer simpler and

easier to read.• Learn about a tool that can determine how readable

your work is.• Develop effective business letters for tough situations.• Discuss e-mail etiquette.• Develop an appropriate writing style and format for your

letters, business cases, and reports.• Recognize standard ways of documenting materials.

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Session Two: The Three Cs

Writing Clearly

Use:•Familiar Words•Concrete Nouns

Avoid:•Jargon•Slang

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Session Two: The Three Cs

Writing Concisely

• Use the active voice when possible.

• Watch out for adverbs.• Don’t be redundant.• Eliminate empty words.

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Session Two: The Three Cs

Writing Correctly

•Style: Style guide, spelling and grammar •Factual: Is the content of the message correct?Not

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Session Two: The Three Cs

What are some possible resources for each of these projects?•Brochure with time management tips•University paper on dinosaurs•Newspaper article on the emergence of Internet fraud•Internal company e-mail on budget items•Company memo recommending a product•Training presentation on goal setting

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Session Three: Grammar and Writing Mechanics

Seven Ways to Simplify Your Writing:• Parallelism• Style/Tone• Empathy/Reader Benefit• Emphasis• Sentence Unity• Sentence Structure• ParagraphsNot

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Session Three: Grammar and Writing Mechanics

More on Paragraphs

• Unity: In good paragraphs, the emphasis is on oneness.

• Coherence: Coherence is achieved by carefully organizing your thoughts/material.

• Emphasis: The paragraph closer is just slightly more important than the opener. Both are necessary.

• Rhythm: You should also vary the length and structure of your sentences so the pace of your writing doesn’t become too monotonous or too choppy.

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Session Three: Grammar and Writing Mechanics

The active voice is:• Direct• Reduces length• Clarifies the sentence• Produces a crisper, more vital style

The passive voice is:• Indirect • Reverses the normal subject-verb-object pattern• Includes some form of the verb be, followed by a

past participle • Usually considered weak, obscure, wordy

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Session Four: Readability

• Mark out samples of 100 words each. • Divide the number of words in all the samples by

the number of sentences. This will give you the average sentence length.

• Count the number of words of three or more syllables in each 100 words. Don’t count proper or words which are combinations of short, easy words.

• Add the average sentence length and the number of “hard words” (as determined in the previous step) per hundred.

• Multiply the sum by 0.4. The resulting number corresponds to the grade-level reading ability.

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Session Five: Writing Letters

1. Letterhead2. Dateline3. Notations4. Inside Address5. Attention line6. Subject/Reference

lines7. Salutation8. Body9. Complimentary close10.Signature Block11.Identification Section

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