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Sunday, April 11, 2010
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Test Your Knowledge (p. 330)
1. What skills do oral presentations give you the opportunity to practice and demonstrate?
They allow you to practice research, planning, writing, visual design, and all forms of communication. They also help you practice dealing with unexpected situations and thinking off of the top of your head. Oral presentations especially help you practice talking in front of people and growing comfortable speaking to large audiences.
2. What three goals should you accomplish during the introduction of an oral presentation?
When presenting your introduction, you should gain the interest of your audience, establish your credibility, and give the audience a preview of your message.
3. What techniques can you use to get an audience's attention during your introduction?
To get your audience's attention, you can relate the audience to each other with something they have in common, tell a story, pass around an object dealing with your message, ask them a question, start with a shocking statistic, or use humor.
4. What three tasks should you accomplish in the close of your presentation?
In the close of a presentation, you should restate your main points in your message, explain the next steps or actions to take, and end on a note that will stick with the audience.
5. What steps can you take to ensure success with online presentations?
- Send materials to your audience to preview your message before you present.
- Try to keep your presentation as simple as possible.
- Ask for feedback or reactions throughout the presentation.
- Think about the viewing experience from the viewer's side when planning your presentation.
- Be sure that your audience will be able to receive all of the information you are sending.
- Allow you audience time to view and adapt to everything they need to.
They allow you to practice research, planning, writing, visual design, and all forms of communication. They also help you practice dealing with unexpected situations and thinking off of the top of your head. Oral presentations especially help you practice talking in front of people and growing comfortable speaking to large audiences.
2. What three goals should you accomplish during the introduction of an oral presentation?
When presenting your introduction, you should gain the interest of your audience, establish your credibility, and give the audience a preview of your message.
3. What techniques can you use to get an audience's attention during your introduction?
To get your audience's attention, you can relate the audience to each other with something they have in common, tell a story, pass around an object dealing with your message, ask them a question, start with a shocking statistic, or use humor.
4. What three tasks should you accomplish in the close of your presentation?
In the close of a presentation, you should restate your main points in your message, explain the next steps or actions to take, and end on a note that will stick with the audience.
5. What steps can you take to ensure success with online presentations?
- Send materials to your audience to preview your message before you present.
- Try to keep your presentation as simple as possible.
- Ask for feedback or reactions throughout the presentation.
- Think about the viewing experience from the viewer's side when planning your presentation.
- Be sure that your audience will be able to receive all of the information you are sending.
- Allow you audience time to view and adapt to everything they need to.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Test Your Knowledge (p. 216)
1. Who is my audience? What are my audience members' needs? What do I want them to do? How might they resist? Are there alternative positions I need to examine? What does the decision maker consider to be the most important issue? How might the organization's culture influence my strategy?
2. These are important to know so that you can appropriately appeal to your audience and arrange your message in a manner that makes sense to you audience.
3. Emotional appeals involve trying to connect with the audience using feelings or sympathies. Logical appeals use reasoning based on analogy, induction, or deduction and do not include feelings or emotions.
4. The three types of reasoning used in logical appeals are analogy, induction, and deduction.
5. The AIDA model is a way to develop and organize messages for conventional marketing or sale messages. It includes getting the attention of the audience, building interest, increasing desire, and motivating action.
2. These are important to know so that you can appropriately appeal to your audience and arrange your message in a manner that makes sense to you audience.
3. Emotional appeals involve trying to connect with the audience using feelings or sympathies. Logical appeals use reasoning based on analogy, induction, or deduction and do not include feelings or emotions.
4. The three types of reasoning used in logical appeals are analogy, induction, and deduction.
5. The AIDA model is a way to develop and organize messages for conventional marketing or sale messages. It includes getting the attention of the audience, building interest, increasing desire, and motivating action.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Analyzing Messages (pp. 160-161)
(1) I chose to analyze and revise sentence number 3. This message is response from an employee to a request from a customer. This is a situation in which there is a response to a claim when the customer is at fault. When responding to this type of message, the responder should avoid placing blame on the customer and focus on courteously informing them how to avoid repeated mistakes. This message as a whole is harsh towards the customer and places a lot of blame on him. This is especially apparent in the last couple of sentences when the responder tells the customer everything that he has done wrong. Instead of ending on a negative note that makes the customer seem at fault, this response should end by portraying a positive message that assures the customer that the company is there to support him and solve his problem as quickly as possible.
(2) Revised Version:
I am contacting you today about your recent request for technical support on your cable internet service. Our main goal in technical support is to work with the customers and troubleshoot quickly so that your problems are solved as soon as possible. A problem that we often encounter in our department is determining each individual customer's need. In order to do this, we provide fields in the online support request form for our customers to indicate details about their computer and the problems they are having. If you could please resubmit your request online and include all of the details about your slow downloading speeds and your specific computer, we can assess the problem and fix it as soon as possible. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns or if there is anything else that we can do to help serve you.
Question #9 (Letter Revision)
a. The beginning of this letter does not make a direct request for what the writer is seeking. He should start the letter with what he is requesting and go into explanations from there. The sentences and questions throughout the letter tend to get confusing because they have more than one idea or topic in each statement. In order to clearly relay the message, the writer should only include one topic of discussion per statement. The overall tone of the message is little too informal and should use more appropriate and business-like words and phrases. Although it ends on a positive note, this message should wrap things up a little better and more clearly define what the request is.
b. 1. Create a clear statement of your request: This should be the first thing included in the letter and should clearly define what the writer is requesting.
2. Decide what explanation is needed to justify your request: The writer should include some details and explanations, but only those that are relevant to the topic. This writer seems to go into too much detail on unnecessary topics.
3. Determine whether you can use lists effectively in your letter: This letter, if done correctly, could effectively use a list. The writer could form list when explaining the request of what he is interested in getting. If this is done, it is important to only include relevant topics and make sure that the list is clear and concise.
4. Ask for specific action: This should be done after the request has been made clear and should be done so in a friendly, yet professional way.
5. Mention a deadline and reason to respond, if appropriate: This is appropriate for this message because the writer has a time limit and should make it clear when he would like a response.
c. Revised Letter:
5493 Beechwood Drive
Trenton, NJ 08608
April 12, 2009
Florida Resort Bureau
1555 Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard
West Palm Beach, FL 33401
Dear Sir:
I recently saw your advertisement about Florida resorts in the Smithsonian magazine and am interested in acquiring more information on them for the vacation that my family and I are planning. We are looking for a resort that is near a larger city as well as the beach and other forms of entertainment for the whole family. I am particularly interested in resorts that have public transportation in case we want to leave the resort at some point throughout our stay.
We are planning this trip for late September and would need the information within the next 2 weeks if possible. If there is any way you could include information on off-season rates and what they include as well as contact information for who to speak to about concert schedules during our stay that would be great. Could you also inform me of the typical weather in Florida during September so that we can know what to expect?
Thank you for your time.
Frank C. Atlas
(2) Revised Version:
I am contacting you today about your recent request for technical support on your cable internet service. Our main goal in technical support is to work with the customers and troubleshoot quickly so that your problems are solved as soon as possible. A problem that we often encounter in our department is determining each individual customer's need. In order to do this, we provide fields in the online support request form for our customers to indicate details about their computer and the problems they are having. If you could please resubmit your request online and include all of the details about your slow downloading speeds and your specific computer, we can assess the problem and fix it as soon as possible. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns or if there is anything else that we can do to help serve you.
Question #9 (Letter Revision)
a. The beginning of this letter does not make a direct request for what the writer is seeking. He should start the letter with what he is requesting and go into explanations from there. The sentences and questions throughout the letter tend to get confusing because they have more than one idea or topic in each statement. In order to clearly relay the message, the writer should only include one topic of discussion per statement. The overall tone of the message is little too informal and should use more appropriate and business-like words and phrases. Although it ends on a positive note, this message should wrap things up a little better and more clearly define what the request is.
b. 1. Create a clear statement of your request: This should be the first thing included in the letter and should clearly define what the writer is requesting.
2. Decide what explanation is needed to justify your request: The writer should include some details and explanations, but only those that are relevant to the topic. This writer seems to go into too much detail on unnecessary topics.
3. Determine whether you can use lists effectively in your letter: This letter, if done correctly, could effectively use a list. The writer could form list when explaining the request of what he is interested in getting. If this is done, it is important to only include relevant topics and make sure that the list is clear and concise.
4. Ask for specific action: This should be done after the request has been made clear and should be done so in a friendly, yet professional way.
5. Mention a deadline and reason to respond, if appropriate: This is appropriate for this message because the writer has a time limit and should make it clear when he would like a response.
c. Revised Letter:
5493 Beechwood Drive
Trenton, NJ 08608
April 12, 2009
Florida Resort Bureau
1555 Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard
West Palm Beach, FL 33401
Dear Sir:
I recently saw your advertisement about Florida resorts in the Smithsonian magazine and am interested in acquiring more information on them for the vacation that my family and I are planning. We are looking for a resort that is near a larger city as well as the beach and other forms of entertainment for the whole family. I am particularly interested in resorts that have public transportation in case we want to leave the resort at some point throughout our stay.
We are planning this trip for late September and would need the information within the next 2 weeks if possible. If there is any way you could include information on off-season rates and what they include as well as contact information for who to speak to about concert schedules during our stay that would be great. Could you also inform me of the typical weather in Florida during September so that we can know what to expect?
Thank you for your time.
Frank C. Atlas
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Netiquette and Effective Emails
1. The purpose of e-mail:
E-mail, a shortened term for the word electronic mail, is a form of communication that is becoming more and more popular every day. The primary purpose of email is to create an electronic way to effectively communicate with others via computers. It is a much quicker and efficient way to send and deliver messages, especially to people who might be further away or not as easy to contact. When composing emails, one must consider his or her audience and form the message accordingly. Another purpose of e-mail is to develop networks both inside and outside of a business or company. When used for this purpose, as well as any other time, the sender needs to be conscious of the emotion that he or she is portraying and make sure that the message does not come across too strong or confusing.
2. Use of capitals and lowercase letters:
The format and visual aspect of emails is a very important concept to consider when composing an e-mail message. A big part of this includes the proper use of capitals and lowercase letters. As stated in the previous paragraph, it is imperative to be aware of the tone of the message being sent. It is sometimes easier to come across stronger than intended when the message is in writing and does not involve face to face contact. The sender should avoid the use of all capital letters because it implies yelling and possible anger. This is not an effective way to portray a message.
3. Subject lines:
One of the most important components of an e-mail address is the subject line. This determines whether or not the reader opens the message and also provides the reader with his or her first impression of the message. A subject line should be very clear and should accurately describe the content and purpose of the message. It is also important to keep in mind that the subject line should be brief and not go into too much detail. A long subject line could possibly create confusion or make the reader not want to read the message.
Websites I used:
http://www.learnthenet.com/english/html/09NETIQT.HTM
http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ia_nq.htm
http://www.dtcc.edu/cs/rfc1855.html
E-mail, a shortened term for the word electronic mail, is a form of communication that is becoming more and more popular every day. The primary purpose of email is to create an electronic way to effectively communicate with others via computers. It is a much quicker and efficient way to send and deliver messages, especially to people who might be further away or not as easy to contact. When composing emails, one must consider his or her audience and form the message accordingly. Another purpose of e-mail is to develop networks both inside and outside of a business or company. When used for this purpose, as well as any other time, the sender needs to be conscious of the emotion that he or she is portraying and make sure that the message does not come across too strong or confusing.
2. Use of capitals and lowercase letters:
The format and visual aspect of emails is a very important concept to consider when composing an e-mail message. A big part of this includes the proper use of capitals and lowercase letters. As stated in the previous paragraph, it is imperative to be aware of the tone of the message being sent. It is sometimes easier to come across stronger than intended when the message is in writing and does not involve face to face contact. The sender should avoid the use of all capital letters because it implies yelling and possible anger. This is not an effective way to portray a message.
3. Subject lines:
One of the most important components of an e-mail address is the subject line. This determines whether or not the reader opens the message and also provides the reader with his or her first impression of the message. A subject line should be very clear and should accurately describe the content and purpose of the message. It is also important to keep in mind that the subject line should be brief and not go into too much detail. A long subject line could possibly create confusion or make the reader not want to read the message.
Websites I used:
http://www.learnthenet.com/english/html/09NETIQT.HTM
http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ia_nq.htm
http://www.dtcc.edu/cs/rfc1855.html
Editing and Revising an E-mail Message
To: sarah@work.net
From: bill@work.net
Cc: jim@work.net
Subject: Money for a training trip
Hey Sarah,
I am working on acquiring money for a training trip that I would like to attend. Do you know who I should ask? Please let me know whenever you get a chance.
Thanks!
Bill
From: bill@work.net
Cc: jim@work.net
Subject: Money for a training trip
Hey Sarah,
I am working on acquiring money for a training trip that I would like to attend. Do you know who I should ask? Please let me know whenever you get a chance.
Thanks!
Bill
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