The course content addresses the following topics:
- The writing process (planning, crafting, drafting, editing, revising, proofreading)
- Anticipating, analysing, and adapting to audience, context, and purpose of communication in the workplace
- The structure of emails, formal letters, business memoranda, minutes of meetings, internal proposals, and short reports
- Analysing, synthesising, and evaluating information in business
- Recognising facts and opinion
- Subjective (emotive) and objective (analytical) language use
- Using writing techniques to adapt to the audience
- Writing routine, positive, and negative messages
- Direct and indirect approaches for communicating negative information
- Vocabulary development: phrasal verbs for business communication, using appropriate tone for audience and communication medium (impersonal, semi-personal and personal), using appropriate register for audience and communication medium (formal, semi-formal and informal language), and avoiding redundancy
- Grammar: sentence structure, subject-verb agreement/concord for complex subjects, verb tenses, parallelism, active and passive voice, article
- Identifying and avoiding common writing mistakes (subject-verb agreement/concord; redundancy; parallelism; fragments; run-on sentences; articles)
- Transition signals for sequencing and linking ideas
- Formatting writing for clear visual presentation and congruent style
- Structure of formal and semi-formal Business English productive skills (speaking and writing): greeting, introduction, body, conclusion, end greeting
- Speaking tasks within a business context: prepared speech, discussion, business solution/proposal pitch