Excellence in Business Communication, 12th Edition Class Notes

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CONTENTS
Preface ................................................................................................................................... iii
Customer Service ................................................................................................................................ iv
Changes and Improvements in the 12th Edition..................................................................................... 1
Online Communities and Resources for Business Communication Instructors...................................... 6
An Unsurpassed Instructional Resource Package ................................................................................. 9
General Teaching Guides..................................................................................................................... 12
Course Planning Guide.................................................................................................................. 13
Introducing the Course to Students.......................................................................................... 14
Conducting the Class .............................................................................................................. 15
Grading and Evaluating Students ............................................................................................ 17
Cooperative Learning Guide for Groups and Small Teams............................................................. 19
Working with Cooperative Learning Groups ........................................................................... 19
Working in Dyads................................................................................................................... 20
Working with the Jigsaw Process ............................................................................................ 20
Collaborative Writing Guide ......................................................................................................... 22
Preparing Students for Collaborative Writing .......................................................................... 22
Assigning Short-Term Projects................................................................................................ 24
Undertaking a Long-Term Project ........................................................................................... 26
Evaluating Collaborative Projects............................................................................................ 31
Service Learning Guide 1: Use Service Learning to Add Real-World Writing
Experience to Your Course ..................................................................................................... 35
What Is Service Learning? ................................................................................................ 35
Example Project: Grant Research and Writing Assistance ................................................. 35
How to Incorporate Service Learning Into Your Course .................................................... 35
Service Learning Guide 2: Real Clients, Real Management, Real Failure:
The Risks and Rewards of Service Learning .............................................................................. 37
Diagnostic Tests of English Skills ................................................................................................. 40
Answers.................................................................................................................................. 40
English Skills Test A .............................................................................................................. 41
English Skills Test B............................................................................................................... 44
More Practice in Grammar Mechanics, and Usage......................................................................... 47
Chapter Guides (non-sequential, chapter-specific paging)
Part 1: Understanding the Foundations of Business Communication
Chapter 1: Professional Communication in a Digital, Social, Mobile World
Chapter 2: Collaboration, Interpersonal Communication, and Business Etiquette
Chapter 3: Communication Challenges in a Diverse, Global Marketplace
Part

ii
Chapter 9: Writing Negative Messages
Chapter 10: Writing Persuasive Messages
Part 4: Preparing Reports and Presentations
Chapter 11: Planning Reports and Proposals
Chapter 12: Writing Reports and Proposals
Chapter 13: Completing Reports and Proposals
Chapter 14: Developing and Delivering Business Presentations
Part 5: Writing Employment Messages and Interviewing for Jobs
Chapter 15: Building Careers and Writing Résumés
Chapter 16: Applying and Interviewing for Employment
Appendix A: Format and Layout of Business Documents
Appendix B: Documentation of Report Sources
Appendix C: Correction Symbols

iii
PREFACE
Successful business communicators spend years on the job before they learn to consistently prepare
effective messages. Obviously, you cannot give students that much practice in one school term. But the
more practice you can give them, the closer they will be to achieving success on the job.
To help you tailor a course to the needs of your students, we have designed a comprehensive package of
learning materials. We hope that you take advantage of the complete package. Together, the elements
provide a rich and varied learning experience.
This manual is divided into five parts:
 Changes and Improvements in the 12th Edition lists the major changes in this edition, followed
by specific changes within each chapter.
 Online Communities and Resources for Business Communication Instructors itemizes the
many online resources the authors have created for adopters of Excellence in Business
Communication. We invite you to join one or more of the online communities and interact with
your peers.
 An Unsurpassed Instructional Resource Package acquaints you with the elements available in
our comprehensive package of learning materials.
 The General Teaching Guides provide tools and advice for conducting a course in business
communication.
 The Chapter Guides provide information to supplement the chapters in the textbook, including
comprehensive lecture notes and suggested solutions to student questions and activities.
We wish to thank George Dovel for his efforts in the preparation of this manual.

1: Professional Communication in a Digital, Social, Mobile World 1-1
Chapter Guides
This section provides information about the chapters in the textbook and suggested solutions and answers
for the activities. Each Chapter Guide includes the following items:
 Chapter overview
 Chapter outline
 Lecture notes organized by Learning Objective, with class discussion questions in
selected sections
 Answers to highlight box questions
 Answers to Apply Your Knowledge questions
 Answers to Practice Your Skills activities
 Solutions to cases (complete example solutions for short-message cases; solution
guidelines for long-message cases)
Part 1: Understanding the Foundations of Business Communication
The first three chapters give students a general understanding of why good communication skills are
important in business, how today’s communication is enhanced through technology (particularly the
revolutions in social media and mobile communication), why effective interpersonal communication can
be difficult, how communication is used in teams, and how it can overcome intercultural barriers. As you
present this material, try to stimulate students to personalize basic concepts. Encourage them to think
about their own careers and the communication skills they’ll need to be successful. Ask members of the
class who have work experience to comment on the communication requirements and challenges they
have encountered.
Chapter 1: Professional Communication in a Digital, Social, Mobile World
Chapter 1 emphasizes the importance of effective communication, explains what it means to
communicate in a professional context, describes the communication process model and the ways social
media are changing the nature of business communication, outlines the effects of the mobile revolution,
advises students on how to use communication technology effectively, and offers guidance for making
ethical choices as a business communicator.

1: Professional Communication in a Digital, Social, Mobile World 1-2
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Understanding Why Communication Matters
Communication Is Important to Your Career
Communication Is Important to Your Company
What Makes Business Communication Effective?
Communicating as a Professional
Understanding What Employers Expect from You
Communicating in an Organizational Context
Adopting an Audience-Centered Approach
Exploring the Communication Process
The Basic Communication Model
Barriers in the Communication Environment
Inside the Mind of Your Audience
How Audiences Receive Messages
How Audiences Decode Messages
How Audiences Respond to Messages
The Social Communication Model
The Mobile Revolution
The Rise of Mobile as a Communication Platform
How Mobile Technologies Are Changing Business Communication
Using Technology to Improve Business Communication
Keeping Technology in Perspective
Guarding Against Information Overload
Using Technological Tools Productively
Reconnecting with People
Committing to Ethical and Legal Communication
Distinguishing Ethical Dilemmas from Ethical Lapses
Ensuring Ethical Communication
Ensuring Legal Communication
Applying What You’ve Learned
Learning Catalytics is a “bring your own device” student engagement, assessment, and classroom
intelligence system. It allows instructors to engage students in class with real-time diagnostics. Students
can use any modern, web-enabled device (smartphone, tablet, or laptop) to access it. For more
information on using Learning Catalytics in your course, contact your Pearson Representative.

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1: Professional Communication in a Digital, Social, Mobile World 1-3
LECTURE NOTES
Section 1: Understanding Why Communication Matters
Learning Objective 1: Explain the importance of effective communication to your career and to the
companies where you will work.
Communication is the process of transferring information and meaning between senders and receivers,
using one or more written, oral, visual, or electronic media.
The essence of communication is sharing—data, information, insights, and inspiration.
Communication Is Important to Your Career
Improving your communication skills may be the single most important step you can take in your
career.
Even great ideas won’t go anywhere without great communication.
As you take on leadership and management roles, communication becomes even more important.
If you learn to write well, speak well, listen well, and recognize the most appropriate way to
communicate in any situation, you’ll gain a major advantage that will serve you throughout your
career.
Communication Is Important to Your Company
Effective communication helps businesses in numerous ways:
 Closer ties with important communities in the marketplace
 Opportunities to influence conversations, perceptions, and trends
 Increased productivity and faster problem solving
 Better financial results and higher return for investors
 Earlier warning of potential problems

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1: Professional Communication in a Digital, Social, Mobile World 1-4
Section 2: Communicating as a Professional
Learning Objective 2: Explain what it means to communicate as a professional in a business context.
If you don’t have a lot of work experience yet, meeting the expectations of a professional environment
might require some adjustment.
Professionalism is the quality of performing at a high level and conducting oneself with purpose and
pride.
Professionalism can be broken down into six distinct traits:
 Striving to excel
 Being dependable and accountable
 Being a team player
 Demonstrating a sense of etiquette
 Making ethical decisions
 Maintaining a positive outlook
Understanding What Employers Expect from You
Today’s employers expect you to be competent at a wide range of communication tasks:
 Organizing ideas and information logically and completely
 Expressing ideas and information coherently and persuasively
 Actively listening to others
 Communicating effectively with people from diverse backgrounds and experiences
 Using communication technologies effectively and efficiently
 Following accepted standards of grammar, spelling, and usage

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1: Professional Communication in a Digital, Social, Mobile World 1-5
Adopting an Audience-Centered Approach
An audience-centered approach involves understanding and respecting the members of your audience
and making every effort to get your message across in a way that is meaningful to them.
Also known as adopting the “you” attitude, in contrast to messages that are about “me” (the sender).
Etiquette encompasses the expected norms of behavior in any particular situation.
Section 3: Exploring the Communication Process
Learning Objective 3: Describe the communication process model and the ways social media are
changing the nature of business communication.
Even well-intentioned communication efforts can fail.
By understanding communication as a process with distinct steps, you can improve the odds that your
messages will reach their intended audiences and produce their intended effects.
The Basic Communication Model
By viewing communication as a process, you can identify and improve the skills you need to be more
successful:
 The sender has an idea.
 The sender encodes the idea as a message.
 The sender produces the message in a medium.
 The sender transmits the message through a channel.
 The audience receives the message.
 The audience decodes the message.
 The audience responds to the message.
 The audience provides feedback.
Considering the complexity of this process, it should come as no surprise that communication efforts
often

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1: Professional Communication in a Digital, Social, Mobile World 1-6
Class discussion question: Think back to a time you experienced a communication breakdown in a
personal or social setting (something you’re comfortable discussing with the class). Did you figure
out why the breakdown occurred? Was it related to cultural differences, emotional factors,
technology, or some other identifiable cause? How might you avoid similar breakdowns in the
workplace?
Everyone in an organization can help minimize barriers and distractions.
Take steps to insulate yourself from distractions, including disconnecting from constant message
feeds and updates.
Inside the Mind of Your Audience
For an audience member to receive a message, the receiver has to:
 Sense the presence of a message.
 Select it from all the other messages clamoring for attention.
 Perceive it as an actual message.
Five habits to increase the chances that your messages will be sensed, selected, and perceived:
 Consider audience expectations.
 Ensure ease of use.
 Emphasize familiarity.
 Practice empathy.
 Design for compatibility.
A received message doesn’t mean anything until the recipient decodes it and assigns meaning to it.
There is no guarantee that the receiver will assign the same meaning that the sender intended.
Audiences tend to extract the meaning they expect to get from a message.
Culture plays a huge role in how messages are decoded.
Individual beliefs and biases influence the meaning that audiences extract from messages.
Selective perception occurs when people distort threatening or confusing information to make it fit
their perceptions of reality.
Differences in language and usage influence received meaning.

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1: Professional Communication in a Digital, Social, Mobile World 1-7
Audience members will respond in the way you’d like them to if:
 They remember the message long enough to act on it.
 They are able to respond as you wish.
 They are motivated to respond.
The Social Communication Model
The basic communication model shows how a single idea moves from one sender to one receiver.
In a larger sense, it also helps represent the traditional nature of much business communication, which
was primarily defined by a publishing or broadcasting mindset.
In contrast to the publishing mindset, this new social communication model is interactive and
conversational.
Customers and other groups are now empowered through social media, which transform passive
audiences into active participants in the communication process by allowing them to share content,
revise content, respond to content, or contribute new content.
The social communication model changes business communication in profound ways:
 Customers and other stakeholders participate in, influence, and often take control of
conversations in the marketplace.
 They rely on each other for information about products, offer technical support, and even
participate in group buying using social tools.

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1: Professional Communication in a Digital, Social, Mobile World 1-8
The Rise of Mobile as a Communication Platform
Mobile is now the primary Internet-access technology for millions of people.
Mobile has become the primary communication tool for many business professionals, including a
majority of executives under age 40.
Continuous, intimate mobile connectivity can start to resemble a continuous stream of conversations
that never quite end, which influences the way businesses need to interact with their stakeholders.
Companies that work to understand and embrace mobile, both internally and externally, stand the best
chance of capitalizing on this monumental shift in the way people communicate.
How Mobile Technologies Are Changing Business Communication
Mobile necessitates some obvious changes in communication practices, such as the need to deal with
smaller screens and different input methods.
Many users expect websites to be mobile friendly, so many companies are adopting a mobile-first
approach, in which they design to fit the needs of mobile users. This typically involves simplifying
screen designs and changing navigation controls to accommodate touch-based swiping maneuvers.
Other changes brought about by mobile are often deeper and sometimes more subtle:
 Mobile users expect to have immediate access to information and the ability to stay
connected to their various social and business networks.
 Constant or radical connectivity is a mixed blessing, as it can prevent people from
healthy disengagement from work.
 Mobile users are often multitasking, which means they are distracted and therefore
getting through to them is more challenging.
 Mobile communication has put pressure on traditional standards of grammar,
punctuation, and

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1: Professional Communication in a Digital, Social, Mobile World 1-9
Section 5: Using Technology to Improve Business Communication
Learning Objective 5: List four general guidelines for using communication technology effectively.
Today’s businesses rely heavily on technology to facilitate the communication process.
To use communication technology effectively, you need to:
 Keep technology in perspective.
 Guard against information overload and information addiction.
 Use technological tools productively.
 Disengage from the computer frequently to communicate in person.
Keeping Technology in Perspective
Remember that technology is simply a tool, a means by which you can accomplish certain tasks.
Technology is an aid to interpersonal communication, not a replacement for it.
Technology has business value only if it helps deliver the right information to the right people at the
right time.
Guarding Against Information Overload
The overuse or misuse of communication technology can lead to information overload, in which
people receive more information than they can effectively process.
Information overload makes it difficult to discriminate between useful and useless information,
lowers productivity, and amplifies employee stress both on the job and at home.
As a recipient, use the filtering features of your communication systems to isolate high-priority
messages that deserve your attention; be wary of subscribing to too many feeds; focus on the
information you truly need to do your job.
As a sender, reduce information overload by making sure you don’t send unnecessary messages;
indicate the priority of messages to help receivers know how to react to them.
Using Technological Tools Productively
In the “information technology paradox,” information tools can waste as much time as they save.
Inappropriate web use not only distracts employees from work responsibilities but can also leave
employers open to lawsuits.
Social media can expose confidential information or damage a firm’s reputation in the marketplace.
Employers need

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1: Professional Communication in a Digital, Social, Mobile World 1-10
Knowing how to use tools efficiently can make a big difference in your productivity.
Managers need to guide and train their employees in productive use of information tools.
Reconnecting with People
Even the best technologies cannot truly match the rich experience of person-to-person contact.
Reconnect in person, or at least over the phone, from time to time in order to maintain positive
working relationships.
Section 6: Committing to Ethical and Legal Communication
Learning Objective 6: Define ethics, explain the difference between an ethical dilemma and an ethical
lapse, and list six guidelines for making ethical communication choices.
Ethics are the principles of conduct that govern behavior within a society.
Ethical communication:
 Includes all relevant information
 Is true in every sense
 Is not deceptive in any way
Examples of unethical communication include:
 Plagiarism
 Omitting essential information
 Selective misquoting
 Misrepresenting numbers
 Distorting visuals
 Failing to respect privacy or information security needs
The widespread adoption of social media has increased the attention given to the issue of
transparency.
Class discussion question:

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