Foundations of Business Communication GM410
Keller Graduate School of Management

Unit One Introduction

Week 1

In this first unit, we will focus on explaining. You cannot write anything unless you can focus on the scope first and contain it. As you  read essays that explain a topic and write one yourself, you will see  how the rest of the course builds from this starting point. 

If you are familiar with the five W’s of journalism – what, when, where, why and who – it will make sense to you that we are starting with the what of a solid explanation in writing. This becomes your foundation. After your reader understands what, you can move on as you will in this class to why. And you will learn quickly that why needs when, where and who to support it. In this course however, we will refer to that as the process of evaluation, and eventually argumentation.

This class is truly a building block of ideas. Start thinking now about topics that are of interest to you, because you will need to focus in on one of them to write your research paper. In fact, if you can think of a topic that you would like to explain for your first paper, you can evaluate it for your second paper and present logical argumentation for it in your third paper. Then you can use this entire body of work and expand upon it even further for your final research paper.

Please note: This is an accelerated course;  a major "secret" to completing all of the work we need to complete in a short eight weeks is to keep the same topic  throughout the course. We will be writing explanations, evaluations, and argumentation that can be used when you write your ten page paper. If you keep the same topic,  you will already have completed much of the work as you approach the research paper. So try to plan your writing to accomodate the goal of the final paper.

This Week's Schedule

In-class objectives

• "Know the end from the beginning" -- understand the scope and objectives of the course as a whole.
• Understand criteria-based evaluation.  What are the criteria readers use to evaluate the strength of a written text?
• Focus on the specific features of an Explanatory text.  Apply these features to assessing sample explanations.

Online Objectives

• Learn from the evaluative techniques and strategies used by a professional writer ("How Male and Female Students Use Language Differently" by Deborah Tannen. Reid, pages 284 - 290)
• Submit a draft of your explanation to the instructor for initial feedback.

Deliverables

• 1 1/2 page explanatory essay (see "Assignment" for details).
• Threaded Discussion participation (you must Post at least once and Respond at least twice to your instructor's and classmates' comments.)

Resources

• Review the TCOs ("Objectives") to make sure you understand the objectives addrressed by this week's unit.
• "Readings."  See the "Reading" link in this unit's navigation area.
• "Unit Notes" reinforces major concepts from the chapters you read. (Powerpoint slides with notes.)
• Wrap-Up Forum (in the "Threaded Disucssion" area) provides a discussion area for questions that come up as you draft your essay.

 

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