UMUC WRTG394 All Weeks Discussions Latest 2019 MAY Question # 00601652 Subject: Education Due on: 05/25/2019 Posted On: 05/25/2019 08:30 AM Tutorials: 1 Rating: 4.8/5

WRTG394 Advanced Business Writing

Week 1 Discussion

DQ1 Considering
communication barriers and inhibitors

This
discussion topic is designed to help you start thinking about and planning for
the first writing assignment, the Communication Inhibitors Report. It includes
four very helpful readings about communication barriers/inhibitors.

NOTE: This
is not your first writing assignment. This is a discussion topic designed to
help you begin thinking about the first writing assignment.

This week,
one of your reading materials is titled, “Oral Versus Written
Communication.” This reading material lists the eight essential elements
of communication. They are as follows:

Source

Receiver

Message

Channel

Feedback

Environment

Context

Interference

In
addition, you will want to access and read through the following three articles
about communication inhibitors.

MSG Team, “Communication
Barriers”

Pandita,
“Physical Barriers in Communication”

Jain, “The
Barriers to Effective Communication”

These items
are available as eReserves in our class in LEO. You can access the articles by
taking the following steps:

• click
Content

• select
Class Resources

• select
eReserves

• select
the icon for eReserves in the middle of your page.

• in the
list of items that appears, locate the articles and download them

Finally,
you will download and read the instructions for your first writing assignment,
“Communication Inhibitors Report.”

After you
have completed reading “Oral Versus Written Communication,” have
reviewed the three articles on communication barriers, and have reviewed the
instructions for writing assignment #1, please respond to this discussion topic
by completing the following tasks:

1) decide
which communication barrier(s) you believe are most powerfully affecting your
communication process in the workplace or community scenario that you are considering
for your assignment;

2) write a
paragraph or two in which you explain how and why you think these barriers are
the main culprits negatively affecting successful communication.

3) Offer
one classmate feedback on his/her post noting similarities or differences that
you find interesting compared to the situation you described in your own post.

DQ2 Communicating
a Problem

This
discussion topic, which explores business communication as a problem-solving
activity, asks you to select and analyze a problem or situation in your
workplace or your community. The problem or situation you discuss in this
activity could turn out to be the focal point of the capstone assignment in
this course, the Research-Based Report. A detailed example of how to respond to
this discussion topic is provided.

This
discussion topic is designed to help you consider a problem in your workplace
or community and to design strategies in communicating about it. This discussion topic might help you approach
your final research-based report in WRTG 394.

Please
think of an example of a problem or situation in your workplace or your community. Then answer the following four questions with
regard to that problem or situation.
Post your answers to this discussion topic.

What is the
problem or situation?

What are
some possible communication strategies in notifying someone about the problem?

What is the
best course of action to take in solving the problem?

What is the
best way to communicate this problem to the relevant individuals?

WRTG394 Advanced Business Writing

Week 2 Discussion

DQ1 The six
principles of good writing in light of Amazon’s strategy

In the
Content for week 2, you are reading a section titled “Good Writing.” In that section, Edward Bailey’s six points of
good writing are listed.

Please take
note of Bailey’s six points of good writing.
Then access the following message from Jeff Bezos to shareholders at
Amazon.com:

Read:
Message from Jeff Bezos to Amazon Shareholders

(The
message is also available in your list of resources in Content for week 2.)

Please read
only the section of this message titled, “Six-Page Narratives.” You don’t have to read the whole
message.

Then answer
the following questions:

In banning
PowerPoint and asking for six-page memos, is Jeff Bezos violating any of
Bailey’s six principles? If so, which
ones does he seem to violate, and why do you make the case that he violates
them? If not, explain why his strategy
does not violate any of the six principles.

Why might
Bezos prefer a six-page memo read silently for 30 minutes at the beginning of a
meeting to a PowerPoint presentation?
What advantage might such a memo have over a PowerPoint presentation?

Please feel
free to conduct your own searches on this issue. Various articles have been written about
Amazon’s ban of PowerPoint in its internal meetings, and these articles have
additional quotes from Bezos.

DQ2 Exercises
on library tutorials #1, #2, and #3

Through
this Library Exercise, you will practice the OneSearch techniques covered in
the Library Tutorial Videos. This will help you understand how to find sources
for assignment #2 and other assignments. When it comes to honing your research
skills for the assignments in this course, as in all other aspects of life,
practice makes perfect!

The
following task is designed to help you become familiar with UMUC’s Information
and Library Services. Completing these
exercises will help you get started on developing a topic for the final
research-based report.

Please
watch library tutorial #1, video tutorial #2, and video tutorial #3. These tutorials are linked to at the top of
the list of Content items for this week.
The tutorials are designed to demonstrate some searching strategies when
finding articles through OneSearch, a research tool that allows you to search
on many databases at one time.

After you
have watched the tutorials, please complete the following tasks. Post your responses to this conference
thread.

Let us
assume you work for a company that is hiring more and more employees of the
Generation Z generation.

Your
supervisor has asked you to conduct research on issues regarding employees from
Generation Z. For example, she mentions
that Generation Z individuals may have different expectations of the work
environment from those of workers from older generations. In addition, she mentions that Generation Z
has different habits with regard to their use of technology than workers from
older generations exhibit.

The
instructions you have been given by your supervisor are quite broad. But let us assume that this is the directive
you have been given.

For this
reason, you will conduct a very general search on Generation Z and their work
or technology habits. You are not quite
sure how to focus the topic, but you know that you would like to pursue this
general topic and focus it later.

1. Using
the strategies discussed in library video tutorial #1, search on some terms and
find four articles on this topic. Your
search can be quite broad at this stage.
Try to use some search phrases that require that you use quotation marks,
as the video demonstrates.

Please
write the topic on which you searched and the search terms you used to search
on it.

2. Again,
using the strategies from library video tutorial #1, for the four articles you
found, please write titles of the four articles and the journals in which they
appeared. You don’t have to cite
anything in APA format, or anything of that nature. Just post the titles and the journal names.

3. Using
the strategies discussed in library video tutorial #2, conduct a new search on
a phrase related to your major or to a workplace topic of interest to you. As the video demonstrates, make sure to use
quotation marks around the phrase you search on.

-What
phrase(s) did you search on?

-How many
search results do you get?

4. Then,
applying the tips in library video tutorial #2, focus your search from question
#2 by using the SU-subject terms option from the drop-down menu for one of the
rows.

-How many
search results do you find after limiting the search by using SU-subject terms?

5. Finally,
using the strategies mentioned in library video tutorial #3, locate the
research guide for your major. If you
have not declared a major yet, please select one that interests you from the options
from the drop-down menu.

Peruse the
research guide for that major. Describe
to the rest of the class in a few sentences any interesting resources you
discovered.

If you have
the same major as another student in the class, this would be a great time to
collaborate and share any resources you found with which others might not be
familiar.

WRTG394 Advanced Business Writing

Week 3 Discussion

To succeed
on the Synthesis Literature Review, you need to know what it means to
synthesize sources and how synthesizing is different from writing an annotated
bibliography. In this discussion, you will write two short paragraphs explaining
these two points. This activity reinforces the writing concepts demonstrated in
the sample paper and video review of Tom Student’s paper described above.

NOTE: This
is not your second writing assignment. This is a discussion topic designed to
help you understand the second writing assignment.

To complete
your assignment, go to the Assignment area and review the assignment
directions, then complete and submit your draft of the assignment in your
assignment folder.

The
following task is designed to help you understand WA#2, the background review
and synthesis of the literature for the topic of your research-based report.

For this
discussion topic, please complete the following:

Read
through the sample essay for WA#2. In addition, watch the video on strategies
for WA#2.

In your own
words, explain what it means to synthesize sources in a paper.

How is
synthesizing different from writing an annotated bibliography?

You may
write a short paragraph for your answer to each question.

Once you
have done this, you should immediately do the following:

* Go to the
Content area of the LEO WRTG 394 classroom which you can reach by clicking on
the link at the top of this page.

* Click on
“Week 2” in the list of Content links on the left side of the page.

* Watch the
“Synthesis Literature Review” video by clicking the link that appears
once you click on “Week 2.”

* Then look
at the sample synthesis literature review paper by clicking on the link just
below the link to the video. (If the paper is off centered, click the link with
the arrow pointing to the upper right – when you hover over it, it will say
“Open in a new window.” You can then see the paper in a window with
the paper centered and easy to read.)

DQ2 Examining
a sample report from Victoria Business School

After
reading the assigned pages from the Victoria Business School’s “Example of
a Finished Report,” you will answer a series of questions. Your responses
should run 1-2 sentences per question. These questions will help you prepare
for your own business report. Provide feedback for two classmates’ answers.

Please
download the document, “How to Write a Business Report,” from
Victoria University. The document is linked
to in Content for Week 3.

Please
access page 26 of the document, “An Example of a Finished Report.”

You will
peruse the report, which covers pages 27-41.

Please
respond to this discussion topic by answering the following questions. Your answers can be 1-2 sentences:

What
problem is the author addressing?

Where in
the report does the author cite secondary research? You can mention one or two pages.

What types
of primary research the author cite in the report? You can give one or two examples.

Consider
your research-based report for this class.
What problem might you address in your workplace, school, or community?

WRTG394 Advanced Business Writing

Week 4 Discussion

DQ1 analyzing
a sample final report — “L’Amore USA”

Read the
assigned sample report and then answer the accompanying questions. The
questions will ask you to critique the report, apply course concepts, and
consider how the report might be revised. Recognizing the strengths and areas
for revision on this sample will help you develop your own report. Provide
feedback for two classmates’ answers.

Please
peruse the sample research-based report, “L’Amore.” You can access it from Content for Week 4.

Then answer
the following questions.

The author
of this paper connected writing assignment #1 to writing assignment #4. What evidence do you see that the author made
this connection?

Analyze the
graphic on page 5. Do you think it could
be improved? How? If you don’t think it needs improvement,
comment on why you think it is a strong graphic in its current form.

Which type
of research—secondary research or primary research—helps this report more? Please pick one of these two choices. Then write a couple of sentences explaining
your answer.

On page 5,
the author writes, “After the survey was completed the facilitator met with the
participants requesting their feedback on the format and clarity of each
example.” Based on this sentence, some
additional analysis could have been integrated into the paper. What additional analysis could have been
integrated? And please explain how it
might have strengthened the report.

DQ2 Preparing
a Research Report Proposal

This
discussion will enable you to plan for the third writing assignment. For this
discussion, you will propose some problem you wish to solve, either in the
workplace or your community, as well as a target audience—specifically the
decision-maker that you will eventually write to. Be sure to read the complete
directions for more details. Provide feedback for two classmates’ answers.

NOTE: This
is not your third writing assignment.
This is a discussion topic that is designed to help prepare you for the
third writing assignment.

To complete
your assignment, you will access the Assignments area and review the assignment
directions. Then you will complete and
submit your draft of the assignment in your assignment folder.

Your third
assignment in WRTG 394 involves writing a memo requesting permission to conduct
research on the topic for your research report.
You should focus on the following as you prepare your report:

Being
specific – your assignment directions (located in the assignment area of the
classroom) give you good examples of ways in which you can make sure that you
are proposing a solution to a specific problem. You must answer the question,
“How will MY workplace or community (this should be narrowly defined as
your neighborhood, apartment community, base housing community, etc.) be made
better by the solution(s) I recommend?”

Identify a
specific decision maker (or makers if, for example, you are proposing a
solution to a workplace issue in your department that might require action by
the HR director as well as your dept. head). Examples of such persons might be
your apartment community manager, the director of base housing where you are
stationed, your department head in your workplace, or your commander for your
military unit.

Use some
primary research – interviews with co-workers, photographs showing a problem
like the need for recycling or going to a paperless office, screen captures
showing the large numbers of emails employees must deal with on a daily basis.

This
assignment can be invaluable to you in preparing for your research report. Note
what the assignment directions say:

You will
find that writing up the proposal will be invaluable in eventually putting
together your final research-based report.
You will be able to apply the scholarly research you conducted for
writing assignment #2 to your specific proposal and evidence of the problem
that you have gathered for writing assignment #3.

For this
discussion topic, please respond with a paragraph in which you describe the
topic you are proposing and the audience (the decision maker(s) mentioned
above;

Please
respond to at least one classmate’s post.

Please note
that you will not be able to see other students’ responses to this discussion
topic until you post your response.

WRTG394 Advanced Business Writing

Week 5 Discussion

DQ1 Analyzing
a sample report, “Evening Shades”

In this
discussion, you will re-write a sample executive summary by applying the style
and structure from the Victoria Business School Report (from Week 3). You will
also critique the summary’s use of research. Provide feedback for two
classmates’ answers.

Please
examine the sample research-based report, Evening Shades.”

Then answer
the following questions.

1. Examine
the executive summary. Please re-write
the executive summary using the example from the Victoria Business School from
week 3. In other words, read over the
executive summary from the report in the document from the Victoria Business
School. Then rewrite the executive
summary for the “Evening Shades” report in similar fashion to that of the Victoria
Business School report.

2. Look at
the sources listed. How could the
sources be improved upon? You can write
one or two sentences in answering this question.

DQ2 Preparing
to write the Research-Based Report

This
discussion asks you to review course materials, and then answer questions
regarding the format of your upcoming business report, its research needs, and
its length. Provide feedback for two classmates’ answers.

NOTE: This
is not a writing assignment. This is a
discussion topic designed to help prepare you for writing assignment #4, the
Research-Based Business Report. . To complete your assignment, you will go to
the Assignments area and review the assignment directions, then complete and
submit your draft of the assignment in your assignment folder.

For week 5,
you will want to review the following reading materials.

From
Business Communication for Success, Chapter 9, section 9.4, “Report”

“How to
write a business report,” from Victoria University of Wellington. Click here to access this document.

Colorado
State University offers a fine website on advice for writing business
reports. Click here to access it.

From the
eReserves in our class: Forsyth, P.K. (2013), Making numbers clear, in How to
write reports and proposals, third edition.

In
addition, please watch the video, Writing a Formal Business Report. The video is linked to at the top of the
Content list for this week.

After
perusing some of these materials and observing the video, please answer the
following questions:

1. Do you
understand the format of your research based report? Look at the list of seven
sections that your assignment directions state your report must contain. State
briefly which section you think will be easiest to write, which section you
think might give you trouble, and which, if any, section(s) you are not sure
you understand.

2. You must use seven (7) sources for this
assignment. Three (3) of these must be
scholarly journals. Explain the difference between a scholarly journal and any
other type of source.

3. Your report must be 2000-3000 words long. How
many pages would that be (you should probably think in terms of 12 point Times
New Roman type)?

WRTG394 Advanced Business Writing

Week 6 Discussion

Victoria
Business School executive summary video

You will
share a draft of an executive summary using the guidelines provided in the
video, and then provide feedback on each other’s drafts.

Please
watch the video, “Video review of executive summary from Victoria Business
School.” It is linked to at in
Content for week 6.

After
watching the video, please complete the following:

Please post
a draft of your executive summary for your final report. This might be a very rough draft of the
executive summary. The purpose of this
discussion topic is to get you started in thinking through your executive summary. Another goal of this discussion topic is to
allow your fellow students to see the topic on which you are writing your
report and the possible conclusions you might have come up with.

Please note
that your executive summary might change quite a bit when you eventually submit
a draft of your report.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Be sure that you follow the
Executive Summary format described in the video.

Please note
that you will not be able to see other students’ responses to this discussion
topic until you post your response.

WRTG394 Advanced Business Writing

Week 7 Discussion

DQ1 Primary
audience and secondary audience

You will
share your understanding of primary and secondary audiences with your
classmates and how this understanding impacts your business report. Provide
feedback for two classmates’ answers.

The purpose
of this discussion topic is to allow you to reflect on your audience for your
final research-based report and to see how your fellow students’ concept of
audience may have impacted their reports.

Please respond
to the following items:

Please conduct
a search on the terms primary audience and secondary audience. List two sources you found and how they
defined these two terms.

For your
research-based report, who is the primary audience? Who is the secondary audience?

Does the
secondary audience impact how you write the report? Please explain why or why not.

DQ2 Plagiarism
and business/professional Writing

Contemplate
the assigned reading, which complicates our understanding of plagiarism and its
meaning. Then answer two assigned question about how this relates to your
understanding of business writing practices. Provide feedback for two
classmates’ answers.

Here is an
excerpt from an article called “Plagiarism Doesn’t Bother Me” by
Professor Gerald Nelms:

2. In some
“real-world” contexts, plagiarism is not only acceptable but is expected. Brian
Martin calls this “institutionalized plagiarism.”

Plagiarism
is as tied to context as every other aspect of language use. In our everyday
conversations—and lectures and classroom discussions—we frequently give
information without citing its source(s). Moreover, there exist contexts where
plagiarism is not only acceptable but is expected and encouraged. Audience
expectations and intellectual property conventions of the community in which
the language use occurs determines whether adopting source material and
expression without citation is acceptable or not. “Institutional plagiarism”
frequently occurs and is accepted without even the lifting of an eyebrow in
most daily business communications and in other bureaucratic contexts. For
example, if a company employee were to try to compose a quarterly report with
original language and organization, her supervisor would probably take her
aside and explain that to be more efficient, she should simply adopt the
organization and language of past quarterly reports.

Some might
argue that “institutionalized plagiarism” is acceptable because the language
and forms being plagiarized are “common knowledge.” That may be the case in
some instances of institutionalized plagiarism but not in every case. Too
often, we decontextualize common knowledge, thinking of it as facts every child
learns in school or as information that exists in at least five (or whatever
number of) credible sources, as some textbooks have defined it. In fact,
content alone does not define knowledge as “common.” Common knowledge is that
which is presumed to be ubiquitous or, at least, widespread within a specific
community—that is, in context. Not all institutionalized plagiarism fits that
bill.

Consider,
for example, the annual reports that a company will publish and distribute to
its investors and creditors and auditors and public officials and anyone else
who might be interested. Annual reports are notoriously templated. They follow
the same organizational structure every year. They almost invariably use a
similar vocabulary, the same phrases, the same sentences in many instances.
Yet, no one accuses the authors, often anonymous or named in the fine print, of
plagiarism. No investors divest themselves of holdings in a company because its
annual report is institutionally plagiarized.

This
excerpt uses two common examples of business writing in discussing ways in
which information is plagiarized – or not – depending, perhaps upon the view of
those in a particular business setting.

There are
two worthwhile questions to consider concerning what Nelms tells us about these
seemingly plagiarizing practices of business/professional writing. In a short
paragraph, respond to the following:

1) Based on
your experience, have you seen such practices in your work? Give an example.
Why do you think this practice is rather common in business/professional
writing?

2) Where do
you think the practice of using the same format, even the same language, for
business documents might have come from? Can you think of any examples of when
you have noticed the use of what is sometimes called “boilerplate”
documents and language?

Please note
that you will not be able to see other students’ responses to this discussion
topic until you post your response.

WRTG394 Advanced Business Writing

Week 8 Discussion

DQ1 Bad
news about your report

For this
assignment, you will role-play a decision-maker who has decided against the
positions advanced your classmates’ memos. Before delivering the “bad news” to
your classmates, make sure to review “Delivering a Negative News Message” and
pay special attention to the instructions for this discussion.

You should
review the link from Purdue University on “Examples of Bad News
Memos” located at the top of the list of activities for this week.

Step 1:
Post your research report as a Word or rtf attachment (this is so a classmate
can read it);

Step 2:
Choose a classmate’s research report and post a response telling him/her that
you are reading his/her report – only 1 reader for each report, please;

Step 3:
(Here’s the hard part – and where Chap. 17 helps). In a memo (check Week 1’s
topic on standard business writing types for correct memo format), tell the
person whose report you have read that the company/community/etc. WILL NOT be
implementing the recommended solution to the problem he/she has proposed. You
will have to be creative in offering reasons why the solution cannot be
implemented (money, opposition from stock holders, higher command or
management, etc., are typical reasons for such decisions). Here is a helpful
explanation of how to handle such a memo:

Bad News
Memos

Post your
memo as your second response to the person you have chosen.

This
exercise gives you practice in one of business/professional writing’s toughest
tasks – saying no.

Remember,
try to follow the advice that you gain from Chap. 17 in the textbook. This will
make the task both a little more difficult (the actual writing task) but
somewhat easier (the handling of having to say no.)

For advice
and resources to help you write a successful bad news memo, see the resources
in Content for Week 7.

Doing this
should give you all the knowledge you need to give your classmate bad news. 🙂

DQ2 Final
reflections on your executive summary

As you
complete your final assignment, share your responses to a series of questions
about the process of business writing and creating an executive summary.
Provide feedback to your classmates’ thoughts.

Please
watch the short video linked to in Content for Week 8, “Video review of
executive summary for WA#4.”

Then answer
the following questions.

What is
proportional length? In writing your
report, did you find it challenging to keep your executive summary to
proportional length? If so, what
challenges did you encounter?Your answers can be a short paragraph for each
question.

To whom was
your report addressed? Is this person or
group of people likely to read your whole report? Or just the executive summary? Please explain
your answer.Your answers can be a short paragraph for each question.

What was
your methodology in your report? You
can review the video to re-visit how the methodology could be integrated into
an executive summary.