Business Communication. Sharpen your communication skills.

COVID-19 update: arrangement of our courses

We are now delivering courses online and in-person. Please check the delivery format of each class before enrolling.

Please note that course materials (excluding prescribed texts) are shared electronically within 48 hours of course commencement. Printing is not available.

In this business writing course, you will gain a fundamental understanding of good writing for any context – the workplace and beyond.

Starting with some simple strategies to clarify your business writing objectives and audience needs, we then discuss structure. You’ll spend time applying these principles to two everyday business documents: correspondence and short summaries.

It also covers design considerations such as how to help your reader scan for information, or when to turn words to visuals. It ends with a review session covering language choice, jargon-busting, grammar, punctuation and more.

Fast-paced and fun, the course lets you voice all of your questions about business writing and learn new skills to lift the clarity of your writing.

This essentials business writing course is a useful lead-in to the more advanced problem-solving techniques covered in Business Writing 2, or the specialist report-writing skills covered in Effective Business Report Writing. It can be taken on its own or in conjunction with either course.

Aims

This course aims to provide you with the tools to write clearly and concisely, regardless of your industry or role. It also seeks to dispel the myth that business communication sounds cleverer when packed with excessive formalities and heavy jargon.

Outcomes

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

• use checklists to ensure your writing addresses the purpose and audience correctly
• choose the right structure for the task at hand
• write jargon-free communications that are clear and concise
• choose the right level of formality for that context
• edit your text for the five essential elements of good writing style.

Content

This course is organised roughly in the sequence of steps you would take to plan, write and review your daily business communications.

Planning

Understanding audience needs, reaffirming your objectives, and choosing the right level of formality before starting to write.

Structure

An overview of the three structures that apply to almost any format (narrative, hierarchy or topic-based), followed by hands-on practice of some standard formats in two essential items of everyday business collateral: emails and short proposals.

Flow

Practicing the rules of good paragraphing, with a topic sentence and strong linking techniques, and ensuring an unmistakable call to action at the end.

Navigation

Helping your reader scan for information, through features such as clear formatting, different heading levels, graphs and charts that replace data-heavy text, bulleted lists and more.

Review

An overview of good grammar and business writing style, plus a basic introduction to the stages of review.

Intended audience

Aimed at early or mid-career professionals who need to learn or improve their core skills in business writing. They might be technicians who are moving into managerial roles, people returning to the workforce after extended leave, or office managers wanting to adopt current best practice in their workplace.

Prerequisites

This course assumes a basic proficiency in written English, such as Year 12 English. If you are a non-native English speaker, you may also want to consider our English language courses in various specific and general topics.

Delivery style

You will learn through a variety of methods including:

• open discussions
• group exercises
• individual response to mini tests.

Delivery options:

• presenter-taught training on University premises
• online training via the platform Zoom.