L-T-P

1st 40
102 BUSINESS COMMUNICATION 4 – 0 – 4 Credits
Semester Hours
1
Course Objectives:
 To provide an overview of Prerequisites to Business Communication.
 To put in use the basic mechanics of Grammar.
 To provide an outline to effective Organizational Communication.

UNIT – I: [ 8 Hrs]
Communication Basics: The process of communication (2-way Model): Sender, Message, Channel, Receiver,
Feedback. Communication Flow in Organizations: The Grape-vine; Formal Channels – Vertical (Downward
and Upward); Horizontal; Diagonal. Non-verbal Communication

UNIT – II [ 12 Hrs]
Language Skill 1 - Listening: Listening Vs. Hearing – Importance of the listening skill – Types of Listening:
Active Listening; Empathetic Listening; Content Listening; Critical Listening – Barriers to Listening –
Guidelines for improving the Listening Skill.

Language Skill 2 - Speaking: Guidelines for improving confidence, fluency, articulation, and accent and voice
modulation while speaking. Oral communication at the workplace: Essentials of a Business conversation

UNIT – III [ 10 Hrs]

Language Skill 3- Reading :The process of Reading; Sub skills of Skimming, Scanning, Inferencing, Guessing
word-meaning, Using appropriate speed for various kinds of reading.

UNIT – IV [ 10 Hrs]
Language skill 4 - Writing : The writing Process – Guidelines for composing effective business messages –
Structure of Routine and Persuasive business messages, good-will, good-news, and bad-news messages.
Features of an effective business E-mail.

Course outcomes
 Apply business communication strategies and principles to prepare effective communication for
domestic and international business situations.
 Identify ethical, legal, cultural, and global issues affecting business communication.
 Utilize analytical and problem solving skills appropriate to business communication.
 Select appropriate organizational formats and channels used in developing and presenting business
messages.

References:
 Business communication – Meenakshi Raman & Prakash Singh
 Business and Managerial Communication – Sailesh Sengupta,PHI Learning
 BCOM: Business Communication – A South Asian Perspective. Lehman, Dufrene & Sinha, Cengage
Learning

Communication Basics:
The process of communication (2-way Model): Sender, Message, Channel, Receiver, Feedback.
Communication Flow in Organizations: The Grape-vine; Formal Channels – Vertical (Downward and Upward);
Horizontal; Diagonal. Non-verbal Communication
Introduction to Business communication
INTRODUCTION
The word “communication” derived from the Latin word ‘communicare’ that means to impart, to participate, to
share or to make common. It is a process of exchange of facts, ideas, opinions and as a means that individual or
organization share meaning and understanding with one another. In other words, it is a transmission and
interacting the facts, ideas, opinion, feeling and attitudes.
It is the ability of mankind to communicate across barriers and beyond boundaries that has ushered the progress
of mankind. It is the ability of fostering speedy and effective communication around the world that has shrunk
the world and made ‘globalization’ a reality. Communication had a vital role to play in ensuring that people
belonging to a particular country or a culture or linguistic group interact with and relate to people belonging to
other countries or culture or linguistic group. Communication adds meaning to human life. It helps to build
relationship and fosters love and understanding. It enriches our knowledge of the universe and makes living
worthwhile.

ROLE OF COMMUNICATION IN BUSINESS

The term business communication is used for all messages that we send and receive for official purpose like
running a business, managing an organization, conducting the formal affairs of a voluntary organization and so
on. Business communication is marked by formality as against personal and social communication.

The success of any business to a large extent depends on efficient and effective communication. It takes place
among business entities, in market and market places, within organizations and between various group of
employees, owners and employees, buyers and sellers, service providers and customers, sales persons and
prospects and also between people within the organization and the press persons. All such communication
impacts business. Done with care, such communication can promote business interests. Otherwise, it will
portray the organization in poor light and may adversely affect the business interest.

Communication is the life blood of any organization and its main purpose is to effect change to influence
action. In any organization the main problem is of maintaining effective communication process. The
management problem generally results in poor communication. Serious mistakes are made because orders are
misunderstood. The basic problem in communication is that the meaning which is actually understood may not
be what the other intended to send. It must be realised that the speaker and the listener are two separate
individuals having their own limitations and number of things may happen to distort the message that pass
between them.

When people within the organization communicate with each other, it is internal communication. They do so to
work as a team and realise the common goals. It could be official or unofficial. Modes of internal
communication include face-to-face and written communication. Memos, reports, office order, circular, fax,
video conferencing, meeting etc. are the examples of internal communication.
When people in the organization communicate with anyone outside the organization it is called external
communication. These people may be clients or customers, dealers or distributors, media, government, general
public etc. are the examples of external communication.

Communication is the life blood of the business. No business can develop in the absence of effective
communication system.
Communication is the mortar that holds an organization together, whatever its business or its size.
When people within the organization communicate with each other, it is internal communication and when
people in the organization communicate with anyone outside the organization it is called external
communication.
Ability to work well in teams, to manage your subordinates and your relationship with seniors, customers
and colleagues depends on your communication skill.
DEFINITIONS OF COMMUNICATION
Communication may be defined as interchange of thought or information between two or more persons to bring
about mutual understanding and desired action. It is the information exchange by words or symbols. It is the
exchange of facts, ideas and viewpoints which bring about commonness of interest, purpose and efforts.

American Management Association defines, ‘Communication is any behaviour that results in an exchange of
meaning’.

Peter Little defines communication as, ‘Communication is the process by which information is transmitted
between individuals and/or organizations so that an understanding response result’.

Newman and Summer Jr. state that, ‘Communication is an exchange of facts, ideas, opinions or emotions by
two or more persons’.

According to Keith Davis, ‘The process of passing the information and understanding from one person to
another. It is essentially a bridge of meaning between the people. By using the bridge a person can safely across
the river of misunderstanding’.

Louis A. Allen defines, ‘Communication is the sum total of all the things that a person does, when he wants to
create an understanding in the mind of another. It involves a systematic and continuous process of telling,
listening and understanding’.

Therefore, the main purpose of communication is to inform, or to bring around to a certain point of view or to
elicit action.

PURPOSE OF COMMUNICATION
1. For instruction: The instructive function unvarying and importantly deals with the commanding nature. It is
more or less of directive nature. Under this, the communicator transmits with necessary directives and guidance
to the next level, so as to enable them to accomplish his particular tasks. In this, instructions basically flow from
top to the lower level.

2. For integration: It is consolidated function under which integration of activities is endeavoured. The
integration function of communication mainly involves to bring about inter-relationship among the various
functions of the business organization. It helps in the unification of different management functions.

3. For information: The purposes or function of communication in an organization is to inform the individual
or group about the particular task or company policies and procedures etc. Top management informs policies to
the lower level through the middle level. In turn, the lower level informs the top level the reaction through the
middle level. Information can flow vertically, horizontally and diagonally across the organization. Becoming
informed or inform others is the main purpose of communication.

4. For evaluation: Examination of activities to form an idea or judgement of the worth of task is achieved
through communication. Communication is a tool to appraise the individual or team, their contribution to the
organization. Evaluating one’s own inputs or other’s outputs or some ideological scheme demands an adequate
and effective communication process.

5. For direction: Communication is necessary to issue directions by the top management or manager to the
lower level. Employee can perform better when he is directed by his senior. Directing others may be
communicated either orally or in writing. An order may be common order, request order or implied order.
6. For teaching: The importance of personal safety on the job has been greatly recognized. A complete
communication process is required to teach and educate workers about personal safety on the jobs. This
communication helps the workers to avert accidents, risk etc. and avoid cost, procedures etc.

7. For influencing: A complete communication process is necessary in influencing others or being influenced.
The individual having potential to influence others can easily persuade others. It implies the provision of
feedback which tells the effect of communication.

8. For image building: A business enterprise cannot isolate from the rest of the society. There is
interrelationship and interdependence between the society and an enterprise operating in the society. Goodwill
and confidence are necessarily created among the public. It can be done by the communication with the
different media, which has to project the image of the firm in the society. Through an effective external
communication system, an enterprise has to inform the society about its goals, activities, progress and social
responsibility.

9. For employees orientation: When a new employee enter into the organization at that time he or she will be
unknown to the organization programs, policies, culture etc. Communication helps to make people acquainted
with the co-employees, superior and with the policies, objectives, rules and regulations of the organization.

10. Other: Effective decision-making is possible when required and adequate information is supplied to the
decision-maker. Effective communication helps the process of decisionmaking. In general, everyone in the
organization has to provide with necessary information so as to enable to discharge tasks effectively and
efficiently.

Purpose of Communication

THE COMMUNICATION SITUATION

The communication situation is said to exist when
There is a person (sender/transmitter) who wants to pass some information;
 There is another person (receiver) to whom the information is to be passed on;
The receiver partly or wholly understands the message or information passed on to him;
The receiver responds to the message or gives feedback.
These four components are essential for communication.

The process of communication (2-way Model): Sender, Message, Channel, Receiver, Feedback.
The transmission of sender’s ideas to the receiver and the receiver’s feedback or reaction to the sender
constitute the communication cycle. The process of communication begins when one person (the sender) wants
to transmit a fact, idea, opinion or other information to someone else (the receiver).
This facts, idea or opinion has meaning to the sender. The next step is translating or converting the message into
a language which reflects the idea. That is the message must be encoded. The encoding process is influenced by
content of the message, the familiarity of sender and receiver and other situation of factors.
After the message has been encoded, it is transmitted through the appropriate channel or medium.
Common channel in organization includes meetings, reports, memorandums, letters, e-mail, fax and telephone
calls. When the message is received, it is decoded, by the receiver and gives feedback to the sender as the
conformation about the particular message has been carefully understand or not.

ELEMENTS OF COMMUNICATION
The process of communication involves the following elements:
1. Sender or transmitter: The person who desires to convey the message is known as sender.
Sender initiates the message and changes the behaviour of the receiver.
2. Message: It is a subject matter of any communication. It may involve any fact, idea, opinion or information.
It must exist in the mind of the sender if communication is to take place.
3. Encoding: The communicator of the information organises his idea into series of symbols (words, signs, etc.)
which, he feels will communicate to the intended receiver or receivers.
4. Communication channel: The sender has to select the channel for sending the information. Communication
channel is the media through which the message passes. It is the link that connects the sender and the receiver.
5. Receiver: The person who receives the message is called receiver or receiver is the person to whom the
particular message is sent by the transmitter. The communication process is incomplete without the existence of
receiver of the message. It is a receiver who receives and tries to understand the message.

6. Decoding: Decoding is the process of interpretation of an encoded message into the understandable meaning.
Decoding helps the receiver to drive meaning from the message.

7. Feedback: Communication is an exchange process. For the exchange to be complete the information must go
back to whom from where it started (or sender), so that he can know the reaction of the receiver. The reaction or
response of the receiver is known as feedback.

8. Brain drain: On whole process there is a possibility of misunderstandings at any level and is called brain
drain. It may arise on sender side if they do not choose the adequate medium for delivery of message, by using
default channel and it may also arise when receiver does not properly decode the message. In other words, we
can say that it is breakdown of cycle at any level.

The Communication Process

FORMS OF COMMUNICATION

Communication is divided into external and internal communication.

External communications are those communications which are occurring outside the organization like
communication with other companies, with government, general public etc. Internal communications are those
which are inside the organization.

Internal communications are further divided into two parts, formal or official and informal.

Formal: Formal communication flows along prescribed channels which all members desirous of
communicating with one another are obliged to follow.
 Informal: Along with the formal channel of communication every organization has an equally effective
channel of communication that is the informal channel often called grapevine, because it runs in all directions—
Horizontal, Vertical, Diagonal. It flows around water cooler, down hallways, through lunch rooms and
wherever people get together in groups.

Formal Communication
ADVANTAGES
1. It passes through line and authority and consequently ensures the maintenance of authority as well as
accountability of the executives’ in-charge.
2. It helps to develop intimate relations between immediate boss and his subordinates.
3. It keeps uniformity in the dissemination of information
4. It flows systematically and the information is trustworthy.
5. Source of information is known which creates harmony amongst the employees.
DISADVANTAGES
1. Increases the workload of various managers as communication is to be transmitted through them.
2. Widens the communication gap between the executives and employees at the lower level.
3. It is time consuming because it follows the scalar chain of authority. The communication flows from one
authority level to another and it takes too much time.

Upward communication
This communication flows the message from subordinates to superiors. It is reverse of the downward
communication or communication flows from lower level to upper level.

BENEFITS
1. Provides feedback to the superiors.
2. Introduction of new schemes without unduly opposition from the employees.
3. Helps in to promote harmony between the management and the employees.
4. Problems and grievances are redressed.

PROBLEMS
1. Employees fear that their criticism may be interpreted as a sign of their personal weakness.
2. Bypassed superiors feel insulted which leads differences between the relationship of the
superiors and employees.
3. Great possibility of message distortion.

Methods/Channels of upward communication

1. Subordinates tell their problem and through discussion find out the solution for a particular problem with the
help of superiors.

2. If employees having any complaint and suggestion about working environment, policy and procedure, peer
group etc., then they write to management without giving identification of themselves and drop into the box.
And the management frequently checks these grip boxes and find out the solution of problem.

3. It is very effective method of upward communication. Organization celebrates their anniversary, arrange
sports meets for their employees, doing some kind of social welfare activities like plantation, providing food for
flood affected areas etc. are the mode of social gathering where superiors and subordinates are at the same
platform and share their emotions, feeling and thought more comfortably.

4. It is just opposite to grip box system. Here, identification of employee is not hidden. Any employee can write
directly to the higher level about the problem which he/she had.
5. It emphasizes in the psychological aspect of human being. A superior act as counselor and he counsels the
problem facing employees. Counseling does not mean that treating only problem facing employees but also for
the better prospect or how employees do better in their workplace.

How to make effective

1. Superior should take initiative to get close to the subordinate staff.
2. Keeping the line of communication short as much as possible.
3. Timely redress the grievances of the employees.

Downward communication
When the communication flows from higher level to lower level, it is called downward communication.
Order, individual instructions, policy statements, circulars etc. fall under downward communication.

BENEFITS
1. Helps to explain to subordinates the organizational plans, policies program and procedures,
work methodology etc. necessary information for performing the job.
2. Helps to convey to the subordinates the expectations of management from them.
3. Acts as a mean to control the activities of the subordinates with active feedback.
4. Provides motivation to the subordinates.

PROBLEMS
1. Sometimes the message may be distorted in the transmission from one level to another level.
2. If a particular authority is not present on the time of passing information it may leads to
delay in transmission of the message.
3. Sometimes when the workload is unevenly distributed among the employees it creates overload or unload of
work which causes dissatisfaction among the employees.

How to make effective

1. Managers should be adequately informed.
2. Managers should be clear about how much to communicate.
3. Some authority should delegate to lower levels to shorten the line of communication.
4. Information should be passed on to the correct person.

Horizontal/Lateral communication
This communication flows between persons at the same hierarchy level either of the same or other department
or division of the organization.
BENEFITS
1. It develops mutual trust and confidence amongst employees of same level which help in maintaining or
promote understanding between similar position holders of different departments.
2. If employees at similar position communicate to each other for a given task it will create or develop the
feeling of co-ordination among various departments.

PROBLEMS
1. Sometimes it creates rivalry among employees of various departments.
2. Proximity shows the liking and disliking of an employee who is near by another in respect of space.
Like in any organization HR department and Marketing department are near to each other then Manufacturing
department. So proximity exists between HR and Marketing department and they favour each other as
compared to Manufacturing department.
3. Biasing shows the liking and disliking of an employee due to religion, caste, family background, personality
etc.

Methods of horizontal communication

1. Face-to-face discussion: When individual communicate directly to another. Face-to-face communication
minimises the problem of misinterpretation and quick feedback makes the communication more effectively.
2. Telephonic conversation: When the employees are busy with their work or they are sited far from each
other then telephonic conversation become more relevant against face to face conversation. It saves time but
sometimes congestion or disturbance and any other obstacles create delay and distort the message.
3. Periodical meeting: Periodical meeting means meeting between employees on weekly, monthly, quarterly,
annually basis where all the members are assembled and discuss on predetermined issues.
4. Memorandum: Memorandum is a written form of communication which transmits between different
departments in the same organisation. It is also called inter office letter.

Consensus/Diagonal
When a number of people irrespective of their status, sit down and confer with one another to arrive at a
decision acceptable to all, it is called consensus. The format of these communications is predetermined and can
not be altered.

Consensus involves consultation

1. Chief executive takes up the problem and analysis it to understand.
2. Collect additional facts and information.
3. Try to find out various means to solve it.
4. Find alternatives.
5. He contacts the members individually or invites them to a meeting.
6. Problem is spelled out to the members.
7. To carefully listen all members view.
8. Arrived at solution.
ADVANTAGES
1. Decisions are taken after consultation among various members; they find it easy to accept them.
2. It promotes harmony among the members of the group. If any conflict and split exits between members it will
be carefully find out and try to solve it.

DISADVANTAGES
1. Member is forced to subscribe to a view he doesn’t hold.
2. Sometimes it may project the false image of management because members think that management may not
be able to handle their problem efficiently.

Grapevine/Informal Communication
Factor responsible for the grapevine phenomenon
1. Feeling of certainty or lack of direction when the organization is passing through a difficult period.
2. Feeling of inadequacy or lack of self confidence on the part of employee, leading to the formation of gaps.
3. Formation of a clique or favoured group by the managers, giving other employees a feeling of insecurity or
isolation.

Forms of grapevine communication

1. Single chain: In this type of chain ‘A’ tells something to ‘B’ who tells it to ‘C’ and so on it goes down the
line. This type of communication flows from one person to another person through single chain or
communication flows one by one. When ‘A’ tells something to ‘B’ who tells it to ‘C’ and so on. One interesting
fact comes out from this type of communication that when one person passes certain information to other and
they treat the message as confidential or secret which further communicated by another with same feeling of
confidentiality and secrecy.

2. Star chain: In this type of chain person speaks out and tells everyone the information he/ she has obtained.
This chain is often used when information or a message regarding an interesting but non job related nature is
being conveyed. Sometimes it also called gossip chain.

3. Cluster chain: In this type of chain ‘A’ tells something to a few selected individuals who again inform a few
selected individuals. And the information flows in similar manner to other individual.
4. Probability chain: The probability chain is a random process in which a transmission of the information to
other in accordance with the laws of probability and then these tell still others in a similar manner. The chain
may also be called random.

MERITS
1. Under grapevine message travel or transmitted faster than any other form of communication because group
formation is based on individual’s own liking and disliking.
2. It supports other channels of communication.
3. Feedbacks are quickly comes out from this type of communication.
4. When an individual communicates with other individual through grapevine it will develop the cohesiveness
and maintain or promote harmony between members of group.
5. By using grapevine communication, employees feel emotional relief.
Because they can communicate with other without the feeling of inadequacy and without threat of higher
authority.

DEMERITS
1. There is a great possibility of distortion of message between members of group.
2. Transmission of message depends upon willingness of sender and what method they used in grapevine which
causes sometimes transmission of incomplete information.

How to make effective

1. The managers should try to spot the leaders. So the harmful rumours do not reach the employees.
2. Involve the workers in the decision making process.
3. The management should immediately use the official channels to contradict the rumours.

Verbal communication
Verbal communication is when we communicate our message verbally to whoever is receiving the message. It
is of two types oral and written which had their own advantages and disadvantages.

Oral communication: Oral communication is the communication where the message or information exchanges
by spoken words. It can be done by both face to face and also through mechanical devices.
Written communication: Written communication is the communication where the message or information
exchanges by written words. Letter, telegraph, fax, e-mail are examples of written communication. Written
communication guarantees that everyone concerned has the same information. It provides a longlasting record
of communication for future. Written instructions are essential when the action called for is crucial and
complex. To be effectual, written communication should be understandable, brief, truthful and comprehensive.

ORAL COMMUNICATION
Oral communication is the communication where the message or information exchanges by spoken words. It
can be done by both face to face and also through mechanical devices. And definitely both will take place an
important position in the organization. In an organization face to face communication can be done through
conference, seminar, group discussion, personal interview, etc.
Mechanical devices play an important role in modern business communication process which include signals,
telephone, mobile, e-mail, fax etc.

Advantages of Oral Communication

1. Speed: Once you make contact with your audience, there is no time lag between the transmission and
reception of massage.
2. Speaker is able to get personal attention of the listener: You might spend hours drafting a memorandum,
letter or report only to have recipient scan if superficially or not read it at all. In a personal contact, however,
you have much more command over the
receiver’s attention.
3. It saves time: Where action is required to be taken immediately, it is advisable to communicate orally.
4. It saves money: At one time you can communicate with more then one person and it saves money as
compared to the written communication when it is within the organization.
5. It allows instantaneous feedback: When you speak directly to one or more listeners, you can respond to
questions as soon as they arise. You can revise quickly if you have used the wrong word and offended or
confused your audience.
6. Supplemented by non-verbal clues: The person receiving oral communication can combine it with the
expressions and other non-verbal clues around the speaker, the message can be better understood.
7. It is extremely useful while communicating with groups at meetings, assemblies, etc.

Limitations of Oral Communication

Although it has many advantages, oral communication is not always the best approach. It suffers from the
following disadvantages:
1. No evidence: There is no documentary proof of oral communication and as such the impact of oral
communication is purely temporary.
2. The lengthy messages are not suitable for such type of communication, because of poor retention power of
human being.
3. Expensive and time consuming when the communicator and receiver are far removed from each other or
when the people who need to communicate are separated by longer distance, personal contact is expensive and
time consuming. Even a cross-town trip for a half-hour meeting can take most of the morning or afternoon,
depending upon traffic or weather.
4. Not appropriate when the matter is controversial.
5. Serious deliberation is not possible: A serious thought is not possible on the subject because the receiver
has to take an immediate decision in response to the communication received.
6. More prone to physical noise: An oral message has more probability of getting distorted because of
physical noise of speech, somebody interfering in between, and likewise.
7. Oral massages do not have any legal validity unless they are taped and made a part of permanent record.

Non-verbal communication
Verbal communication refers to the communication which occurs with the help of words. A verbal contact,
therefore, suggests an oral contact and a verbal evidence denotes oral evidence. Non-verbal communication
refers to the type of communication that does not use words.
Non-verbal communication is closely associated with the power of observation. The receiver of the
communication should be in a position to see, hear and even feel the communicator. The receiver of the
communication should be in a position to clearly see the face, the gesture, the tone, the dress, the appearance
and also hear the voice of the communicator. Since it is through observation, non-verbal communication may be
both intended and unintended. It is intended when the communicator tries to convey certain messages to the
target group through conscious gesture, postures and other forms of body language. Non-verbal communication
is unintended when the body language, posture or appearance of the communicator is interpreted by the
receiver, even though it is not done consciously.
A sloppy posture or a causal attire (cloths) may be interpreted as lack of seriousness, although the speaker may
be quite intent.

Non-verbal communication is usually understood as the process of communication through sending and
receiving wordless messages. Such messages can be communicated through gesture; body language or posture;
facial expression and eye contact; object communication such as clothing, hair styles or even architecture;
symbols and infographics. Speech may also contain non-verbal elements known as paralanguage, including
voice quality, emotion and speaking style, as well as prosodic features such as rhythm, intonation and stress.
Likewise, written texts have non-verbal elements such as handwriting style, spatial arrangement of words, or the
use of emotions.

Importance of Non-verbal Communication

1. For conveying ideas related to geography, maps, charts, graphs etc. At a glance, the receiver can understand
the matter, because non-verbal methods can present a large amount of data in a compact form.
2. For traffic signs and signals, non-verbal communication is absolutely essential because there must be instant
response from the drivers or pedestrians.
3. Every human being normally respond quickly to colours, pictures or sounds than to any language.
4. The only method to convey illiterate people through non-verbal symbols.

Body Language
Body language means the changes that occur in the body position and movements that shows what the person is
feeling or thinking. Much of it is involuntary and unconscious most persons are not aware of their body
language. But it makes powerful impact on others.

Body language can be divided into conscious and unconscious:

1. Unconscious movements are of biological origin, acquired habit and cultural customs are as follows:
Biological: Certain body shapes, skin colour and features cause persons to have some kinds of gestures,
expressions and postures. Besides, we constantly try to adjust and adapt our body to our environment which we
may or may not find comfortable.
Habitual: Some movements and expressions are learnt as habit in the process of adapting oneself to the
environment. They also arise from one’s occupation which requires constant posture or movement of certain
kinds. Certain speaking styles and phrases are also
occupational habits.
Cultural: Customs like not sitting cross-legged before elders, not looking straight in the eye of elder or senior,
are culture specific. Customs of receiving guests, introduction, social conduct also include some gestures.

2. Conscious movements, postures and voice modulations are deliberately used. Actors are specially trained for
this, skilled communicators, especially good presenters also make conscious use of body language.
No one can gain full control of one’s body language, but it is possible to enlarge one’s awareness of one’s body
and gain a good deal of control on one’s posture, movements and voice modulation. If we develop increased
sensitivity to our own body language, our ability to read other’ body language is increased.

APPEARANCE
A person’s general appearance depends on several things. Two of the important factors that contribute to
appearance are grooming and personal hygiene. Care of skin, nails, feet and hair are expected standards. A
person who neglects these aspects makes an unpleasant impression. Appearance makes the first impression, lack
of neatness or cleanliness, carelessness in grooming, clumsy clothes make a
negative impression. Poor health is easily reflected in the appearance.

FACIAL EXPRESSIONS
It is said that the face is the index of the mind. The thoughts of the mind and the feeling of the heart often find
expression on the face. A cheerful or appreciative smile, displeased frown, a look of surprise and several other
expressions of the face can convey, with or without words, the attitude, feelings and reaction of the
communicators. There are people who are good at reading facial expressions. Good communicators, be they
speaker or listener, learn to read and interpret facial expressions.

EYE CONTACT
Eye movements is a key part of facial behaviour, directing other’s attention or showing surprise or happiness
and other emotional displays. Eye contact between speaker and listener is necessary for indicating that both are
interested in the communication. While making an oral presentation it is important to create rapport with the
audience with eye contact.
Presenters make it a point to take in the whole audience with a sweep of the eye, making brief eye contact with
as many as possible. The comfort level for eye contact is three to five seconds, if eye contact is held more than 3
to 5 seconds it can cause discomfort to the other person. It is commonly believed that avoiding eye contact
indicates that the speaker is lying, yet some liars may hold
unblinking eye contact and watch to see your reaction. Persons who lack self-confidence also generally avoid
eye contact. However, the rules and customs of culture influence how people use their face and eyes.

SMILE
A smile is a very potent form of facial expression. It opens the door to communication. A natural, pleasant smile
carries great significance in establishing and sustaining human relationships. The significance of smile is
beautifully brought out in the saying, “You are never fully dressed unless you wear a smile.”

POSTURE (BODY POSITION)

Posture refers to the way one stands, sits and walks. The position of hands and legs and other parts of the body
reveals not only an individual’s state of mind—whether he is vibrant, alive and dynamic, nervous and jittery,
confident and self assured etc. but also his grip on the subject matter of communication. An efficient speaker
stands tall, feet together with the weight directly over the instep
keeping his chin on a line parallel to the floor or at right angles to the backbone. Standing in this posture before
a group is essential for successful speaking. A speaker with a drooping shoulder and a postruding stomach
seems to be tired and worn out.
The sitting posture also show your personality. In a group discussion a participant when takes a turn to speak
changes his posture. However, different situations demand different postures. One may keep one’s back straight
from the waist up, both the feet may be on the floor, one slightly in front of the other.
The walking posture may convey how confident or diffident, energetic or withdrawn a speaker is. For gracefully
a speaker should remember to move his or her legs freely from the hips, lift to move his or her feet from the
floor, walk in straight line, avoid stride or taking tiny steps.
For effective speaking, naturally one should cultivate how to shift his or her posture, how to shift the weight of
the body on the legs while speaking and to learn where to place his or her hands.
GESTURES
Gestures play a significant role in making the intent of the communication effective and content productive. The
gestures like playing with the ring, twisting a key chain or clasping one’s hand tightly may indicate the state of
mind of the speaker affecting both the encoding and decoding of his/her message in communication.
An efficient speaker learns to inculcate appropriate gestures by practising the same in front of mirror. He/she
also seeks the guidance , in this regard, from his/her friends and colleagues. However, in the use of gestures one
should be constantly self-evaluating judging and using the right gesture for the right impact. It is also true that
on making gestures one should be careful and cautious about the
cultural limitations, sexual implications, moral bindings. Gestures do add meaning to the message but they may
turn awkward if not used keeping time, place and person in the communication. Some example are handshake,
sitting position, thumbs up, hand to face, head nod, collar pull, thumb and finger rub, eye signals, wink of the
eye etc.

CLOTHING AND ACCESSORIES

Clothing is very important aspect of body language. It requires judgement to make a subtle impression by what
you wear. The colour, design, cut and fitting, combine to make up the dress. In India we have several choices as
it is acceptable to wear clothing of national style or of western style. Appropriateness for the occasion is
essential, the formality of the occasion, the time of the day, the season, the cultural background of the people
who will be present and the conventions of your own organization should provide good guidance.
Accessories like tie, footwear, jewellery need careful selection and should be comfortable to wear.
Handbag or briefcase is included in accessories. Whatever you carry on your hands ought to look comfortable
and gracefully carried, otherwise, it will convey a poor image.

ENERGY
Energy and enthusiasm as an aspect of body language is hard to describe, but most people have experienced the
impact of a person with a high level of energy. State of physical and mental health play a large part in body
language, a healthy person is energetic and maintains a certain level of enthusiasm in work. A person’s
enthusiasm is reflected in the style, it is usually infectious and make
listeners also feel enthusiastic.

TIME (CHRONEMICS)
Time given to listen or to speak to people creates a sense of self-esteem in them. It is equated with care and
concern.
On the other hand, a person who uses one’s own time and other people’s time wastefully, creates an impression
of being inefficient and disorganised. A sense of timing in conducting meetings, in conveying good or bad
news, in making a presentation, generates respect and goodwill.

SPACE DISTANCE (PROXEMICS)

Each communicator has a personal zone and territory built or constructed around himself or herself which he or
she does not allow to invade during communication unless the relationship between the speaker and the listener
is intimate. Edward T. Hall has described human relationship in terms of four kinds of distance as:
1. Intimate–Physical contact to 18 inches.
2. Personal–18 inches to 4 feet.
3. Social–4 feet to 12 feet.
4. Public –12 feet to range of eyesight and hearing.

Proxemics
Without question, the type and quality of our communication activities differ in each of these four zones. But
remember that we determine these areas individually and can change them by changing our physical location.
Thus, they are specific to us personally.
Space distance differ from one culture to another. Space distance may be sometimes misconducted and affect
the communication and the message content. However, in a heightened emotional state of mind the normal
distance might be ignored.

Paragraph Language
The non-verbal aspects of the spoken words are known as paragraph language. It includes the qualities of the
voice, the way we use our voice, as well as the sounds we make without uttering of the words. It is possible to
control and use paragraph language effectively, becoming aware of it and playing attention to one’s voice and
speech.

VOICE
Voice has characteristics like
• Tone is the quality of the voice.
• Volume is the loudness or softness, which can be consciously adjusted to the number of the persons in the
audience and the distance between the speaker and the listener. Speaking too loud shows lack of self-command
or abrasive nature.
• Pitch is the high or low note on the scale. A high pitched voice is often unpleasant, and suggests immaturity or
emotional disturbance, a frightened person speaks in a high pitched voice. It is better to begin softly, in a low
pitch and raise the volume pitch as required

SPEED
Speed is factor of speech. Rapid speech indicates excitement. We increase speed of speaking to tell an
interesting story and reduce speed to explain a difficult idea.

PRONUNCIATION
Pronunciation means the accepted standard of the way in which a word is said. Correct and clear pronunciation
is important and indicates that the speaker is careful and has consideration for the audience.

ACCENT
Accent is the way a person pronounces the sound of the language. Every language has its own accent or way of
forming the sounds, we carry out mother tongue accent to other language. Good accent in a new language is
learnt by listening to native speakers of the language.

STRESS
Stress on a particular word in a sentence can change the meaning and implication. Try reading the sentence,
‘what you did in last meeting?’ by stressing a different word each time and note the difference in the implies
meaning. Sometimes when the speaker hesitates to speak certain word then they stress the word like
Mmmmmm! Ouch! Huh! etc.

SILENCE
Silence can be very effective way of communication. Silence is a difficult method of communication to use as it
takes a good deal of self-control and self-confidence to be able to hold one’s tongue. Short silences or pauses
are very effective in giving emphasis to words. A pause before or after certain words makes the words stand out
from the rest. A skilfully placed pause has the power to make the listener more alert. But some of it creates
barrier for communication like when conversation through telephone the silence may not be effective because
the other person cannot see the facial expression of the other person.

Non-verbal Aspect of Written Communication

• Colour
• Pictures
• Diagrams
• Graphs and Charts
• Maps
• Flow Charts
• Signs and Signals

BARRIERS OF COMMUNICATION
1. Wrong Choice of Medium
Each communication must be transmitted through an appropriate medium. An unsuitable medium is one of the
biggest barriers to communication.
Examples: When communication takes place in big organisation and departments or division are far from each
other. If any manager wants to communicate with others for confidential matter than they opt written
communication as compared to other medium of communication. So, it is required that medium should be
accurate and if wrong or unsuitable medium is selected than it leads to the
biggest barrier to communication.
2. Physical Barriers
Noise—In factory, oral communication is rendered difficult by the loud noise of machines.
Electronic noise interferes in communication by telephone or loud speaker system.
The word noise is also used to refer to all kind of physical interference like illegible hand writing, bad
photo-copies etc.
Time and distance.
— Congestion in telephone and network facilities.
— People working in different shifts.
— Faulty seating arrangement in a hall.
3. Semantic Barriers
Interpretation of words
A person interprets same word in a different meaning and this will cause barrier between the communications.
Murphy and Peck in their book ‘Effective Business Communication’ mentioned, the little word ‘run’ has
71 meanings as a verb
35 as noun
4 more as an adjective.
 Bypassed instructions
Bypassing is said to have occurred if the sender and the receiver of the message attribute different meanings to
the same word or use different words for the same meaning.
“Take it to be our stockroom and burn it”
In official language burn it means to make more copies of the same document.
Denotation & Connotations
Words have two types of meanings denotative and connotative.
Denotative—The literal meaning of a word is called its denotative meaning.
It must inform and names objects without indicating any positive or negative.
Connotative—It allows qualitative judgments and personal reactions.
Like—Honest, cheap, sincere etc.
Ex:—“He gave us cheap material”.
“At this shop, they sell things cheap”.
First one is favourable connotation and second is unfavourable.
To avoid this problem (By passed instruction and connotative meaning of words) the followings can be used:
❖ Prefer words which are familiar to the receiver.
❖ If words are unfamiliar to the receiver, we should make meanings clear the very first time we use it.
❖ We should choose words with positive rather than negative connotation.
4. Socio-Psychological Barriers
Attitude and opinions
The information which agrees with opinion and attribute of the individual is favourable for that particular
individual.
Emotions
It plays an important role in the act of communication.
If the sender is perplexed, worried, excited, afraid, nervous then he will not be able to organize his message
properly.
Closed Mind
A person with a closed mind is very difficult to communicate with. We hold our opinion so rigidly that we just
refuse to listen.
Status-consciousness
We are over-conscious of our lower or higher rank and do not express ourselves candidly.
The source of information.
We react according to the trust we repose in the source from which the communication originates.
Faulty transmission
Most of part in the message is lost in transmission.
(In oral communication, something in the order of 30% of the information is lost in each transmission.)
Poor retention
Oral message in particular are lost due to poor human retention ability.
(Employees retain only about 50%)
PRINCIPLES OF EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION
It is very difficult to suggest a comprehensive list of vital features of system of communication. It will depend
on the specific needs of the situation. The following guidelines or principles may be followed to achieve
effective communication:

1. Clarity of message: The basic principle in communication is clarity. The message must be as clear as
possible. No vagueness should creep into it. The message can be conveyed properly only if it is clearly
formulated in the mind of the both sender and receiver.

2. Speed: A good system of communication must ensure a speedy transmission of message.

The time taken to transmit a message to its destination and speed of the communication system should be
considered on the basis of the urgency of communicating the message. If message not delivered at time it create
problem for organization.

3. Two-way process: Communication is the two-way process that provides feedback to the sender from the
receiver. Feedback refers to transmission of information concerning the effect of any act of communication.

4. Reliability: Communication starts on the basis of belief. This atmosphere is built by performance on the part
of the expert. The receiver must have confidence in the sender. He must have a high regard for the source’s
competence on the subject.

5. Completeness: Every Communication must be complete as adequate. Incomplete messages create

misunderstanding, keep the receiver guessing and delay action.

6. Content: The message must be meaningful for the receiver, and it must be compatible with his value system.
It must have significance for him. In general, people select those items or information which promises them the
greatest rewards. The content determines the response of the audience.

7. Accuracy: The communication medium should ensure accuracy in the transmission of messages. Whatever
medium chooses by the sender should be accurate for that particular kind of information which they want to
send.
8. Capability: Communication must take into account the capability of the audience.
Communications are most effective when they required the least effort on the part of the recipients. This
includes factors like reading ability and receiver knowledge.

9. Economy: The communication system should be as much economical as possible. But efficiency of the
system should not be sacrificed to achieve economy.

10. Secrecy: The communication system should ensure secrecy and there should be no leakage of information.
It becomes more essential when messages are of confidential nature.

GATEWAYS TO EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION

Developing and maintaining a system of communication is the key job of any manager. The characteristics of a
good communication system are discussed below:
1. Two-way channel: In communication, two parties are involved, namely, the sender or transmitter, and the
receiver of the message. An effective communication demands two-way communication. It should be vertical,
downward and upward. Therefore, a manager should thus not only to inform, instruct and order but should also
be prepared to listen, understand and interprets.
2. Clarity of message: Clarity of facts, ideas, opinion in the mind of communicator should be clear before
communicating. According to Koontz and Donnell, “A communication possesses clarity when it is expressed in
a language and transmitted in a way that can be
comprehended by the receiver.”
3. Mutual trust: A communication system may be considered excellent when mutual trust or understanding
exists between sender and the receiver of the message. Existence of healthy interpersonal relation between the
seniors and their subordinates is also an indicator of an adequate system of communication in any department or
organization.
4. Timely message: Considerable attention should be given to the timeliness of communication. Old
information is worse than none at all.
5. Consistency of message: Consistency can be achieved if the communicator keeps in his mind the objective,
policies and program of the enterprise. It should not be conflicting with the previous communications,
otherwise, it would create confusion and anarchy in the organization.
6. Good relations: The mode of communication should be chosen in such a manner that it does not hurt the
feelings of the receiver. It should create proper understanding in their minds of the receiver which leads to
develop and maintain the good relationship among the
receiver and the sender.
7. Feedback: Feedback provides proper understanding of the message to the receiver. It helpful in making a
two-way communication process. The sender must try to ascertain whether or not receiver properly understood
the message.
8. Flexibility: The communication system should be flexible enough to adjust to the changing requirements. It
should absorb new techniques of communication with little resistance.

SEVEN Cs OF COMMUNICATION
Exercise 1

1. How do you define communication?

2. What is the role of communication in management of business?
3. What are the different purposes of communication? Briefly explain any five of them.
4. Discuss the different situations when the communication exists.
5. “Communication is an exchange of facts, ideas, opinions and emotions by two or more persons.” Explain the
statement and discuss the role of feedback in communication.
6. “Communication is the two way process.” Explain.
7. Discuss the elements of communication process.
8. Give three examples of brain drain in communication process.
Exercise 2
1. What are the different forms of communication? Write detailed notes on the importance,
advantage and limitation of any two of them.
2. Define formal communication. Discuss its merits and demerits also.
3. What are the different types of formal communication? Briefly explain any two of them.
4. What are the merits and demerits of consensus?
5. Write a short note on informal communication.
6. What are the different forms of grapevine? Explain with examples.
7. Write notes on:
(i) Downward communication
(ii) Upward communication
(iii) Horizontal communication
(iv) Consensus
(v) Grapevine
8. Discuss the importance of informal communication in business organization.
9. Write explanatory notes on formal communication channel in business organization.
10. Distinguish between the upward and downward communication with examples.
11. What are the barriers to effective communication in an organization?
12. Discuss the semantic barriers to effective communication and how it will be overcome.
13. What are the different socio-psychological barriers to communication?
14. Explain how the wrong choice of a medium acts as a barrier to effective communication.
15. What physical factors cause barrier to communication?
16. Write brief notes on:
(i) Status consciousness
(ii) Attitude and opinions
(iii) Emotions
(iv) Close mind
(v) Poor retention
(vi) Faulty transmission
(vii) Source of information
17. Explain the general principles of effective communication.
18. Discuss the gateway of effective communication.
19. Explain the seven Cs of written communication.
20. Explain the seven Cs of oral communication.
21. Discuss the importance of clarity on message in written communication.
22. Write notes on:
(i) Clarity of message
(ii) Completeness of message
(iii) Courtesy of message
(iv) Correctness of message
Exercise 3
1. How do you define oral communication? Explain with the help of examples.
2. What are the advantages of oral communication?
3. What are the limitations of oral communication?
4. How do you make your oral communication more effective?
5. What is effective listening?
6. Briefly discuss the significance of listening in communication.
7. Discuss the process of listening.
8. Mention advantages of listening.
9. How can you improve your listening ability?
10. “Listening patiently is an important listening skill.” Do you agree with this statement?
Explain with the help of example.
11. How do you define non-verbal communication?
12. Explain the importance of non-verbal communication in business communication.
13. Define non-verbal communication. How is it differentiated by verbal communication?
14. “Body languages play an important role in oral communication.” Explain.
15. Write brief notes on:
(i) Unconscious body language
(ii) Conscious body language
16. Explain the significance of facial expression in body language.
17. Differentiate between chronemics and proxemics.
18. How does space distance influence the particular message and individual perception?
19. Write notes on:
(i) Clothing and accessories
(ii) Energy
(iii) Time
(iv) Space distance
20. Explain the following terms:
(i) Appearance
(ii) Facial expressions
(iii) Eye contact
(iv) Smile
21. Write explanatory notes on body posture and gestures.
22. What is Paralanguage? How does silence affect the quality of non-verbal communication?
23. Write brief notes on Paralanguage and Body Language.
24. What is the different content of Paralanguage?
25. Write notes on:
(i) Silence
(ii) Voice
(iii) Pronunciation

UNIT – II [ 12 Hrs]
Language Skill 1 - Listening: Listening Vs. Hearing – Importance of the listening skill – Types of Listening:
Active Listening; Empathetic Listening; Content Listening; Critical Listening – Barriers to Listening –
Guidelines for improving the Listening Skill

Introduction:
The average person spends 45-75% of their waking time listening rather than talking. Since we do listen more
than we talk, it is important for our success as communicators to focus as much on the listening process as it
does the verbal or nonverbal processes of communication. First, it is important to realize that listening and
hearing are two different things. Hearing is the physical process that your body goes through as sound hits our
ear drums. It is a passive activity where we don’t have to actively engage our brain to do that activity. Listening,
on the other hand, is an active process that requires effort on our part – we actually have to consciously think to
listen!

Listening: Listening Vs. Hearing –

HEARING LISTENING

Hearing is the act of perceiving sound and receiving Listening is the act of hearing a sound and
sound waves or vibrations through your ear. understanding what you hear.

Hearing is one of the five senses and it just happens all the Listening Requires concentration so that your
time – whether you like it or not – unless you have a brain processes meaning from words and
hearing problem sentences.

Hearing simply happens. Listening leads to learning.

Hearing is a skill where you use your ears only. It one of Listening uses different senses, like the sense
the five senses. of hearing, seeing, or sense of touch.

Listening is a skill that lets the sound you hear

Hearing is an involuntary act where you simply receive
go through your brain to process the
vibrations through your ears.
meaning of it.

Physiological Psychological
 Subconscious level Conscious level

Concentration is not required Concentration is required

Summary:
1. Hearing and Listening uses both your ears.
2. Hearing is receiving sound waves through your ears, while listening means hearing and understanding
what you’ve heard.
3. Hearing is part of the five senses, while listening is a choice to hear and analyse what you hear.
4. Hearing is using your ears only, while listening is using your body’s other senses.
5. Listening is observing other’s behavior that can add meaning to the message, while hearing is simply
receiving sound vibrations.
6. Listening can build better relationships with others, while hearing cannot.
7. Take good care of your ears; you cannot listen when you cannot hear.

Feature of an effective listening

Listening is a process of receiving, interpreting and reacting to the messages received from the communication
sender.
Effective listening is an art of communication, which is often taken for granted and ignored. In other words,
Listening is the ability to understand the encoded message.
Listening require conscious efforts of interpreting the sounds, grasping the meanings of the words and reacting
to the message.
No communication process is complete without listening Hearing and listening are not the same People may
often use these words interchangeably.
In fact, hearing is solely depends on the ears, is a physical act, everyone can hear without deliberate effort.
Hearing is merely vibration of sounds on the ear drum followed by electrochemical response On the other hand
listening requires voluntary attention and then making sense of what is being said.
In a biology class teacher asked the students to refer to a book titled “Origin of Species” One of the student
sincerely went to library searched to the catalogue of library, looking for book named “Orange and Peaches” but
to his utter dismay he could not find it.
When he approached the teacher he found that the book was entitled Origin of Species. This is what happens
when there is lack of concentration in listening

Importance of the listening skill –

Listening is very important part of everyone’s life, as through listening we can comprehend the language;
understand the people around us it may be interacting to customers or with subordinates or even to the whole
world at large. Whether in business or personal life, listening is extremely important.
The time spent on listening is always substantial. In fact listening is an important everyday means of gathering
information and acquiring knowledge, it is even vital for socializing, for relaxation, for inspiration, and even for
gaining new ideas officially or by listening to friends and peers.
As a student one has to listen to lectures, seminars, presentations, discussions & instructions. Similarly as a
professional listening takes place with boss, colleagues, subordinates within the organization. Likewise a judge,
a psychiatrist, and a physician must possess special competence in listening.
Stephen Covey identifies listening as one of the seven habits of effective people, therefore if one wishes to
become a successful manager, it is essential to adopt and improve listening skills.
According to Adler, R. et al. (2001) Adults spend an average of 70% of their time engaged in some sort of
communication, of this an average of 45% is spent listening compared to 30% speaking, 16% reading and 9%
writing.

Importance of Listening at Workplace:

Listening has vast importance not only at a personal level in life but also at workplace. Business owners of any
segment, entrepreneurs, and the employees, who so ever develop attentive listening skills and encourage this
ability for others too, will be the most likely to keep their organizations progressing.
Listening is a lively process that involves focusing on what is said without allowing erstwhile beliefs to obstruct
the process. It is true that if people would concentrate on listening at work, they will gain profitable results such
as increased productivity, more rapid progress towards target and more pleasant relationships between co-
workers.
The below mentioned are some points which further elaborate importance of listening at workplace:
1 Knowing your organization
Careful listening to the grapevine helps to know the members of the staff, about the company’s activities and
policies. Therefore, it leads to better understanding of organization, it also facilitates in predicting what changes
are required for growth.

2 Calming complaining employees

Harvey Mackay, a businessman said, “You can win more friends with your ears than with your mouth”. Very
often employees have certain grievances, all that they need is a listener. If a manager or a leader listens to them
patiently their anger will be drained out and it will lead to calmness & peace of mind.

3 Formulating better policies:

If a manager listens to his/her subordinates carefully, he/she will know that which policies are acceptable to all
other members and are better suitable for the organizational success. This step may also accomplish the willing
support of employees.

4 Open door strategy:

Some managers use open door strategy and keep the doors open for employees to walk in and talk. It leads to
better understanding and better upward communication. Sometimes it also happens that their doors are open but
their ears are closed. This bad listening of managers leaves the employees in distress. Despite of this, if a
manager listens patiently, employees will be encouraged to talk, and there will be free upward communication.

5 Spotting sensitive areas:

Problems if not resolved could lead to serious disputes. It is important for managers and leaders to spot the
sensitive areas and resolve complaints by finding better solutions to avoid serious disputes. Mahatma Gandhi as
a leader was like an expert therapist, by analyzing the problems he listened patiently to the grievances of the
people, and helped them to live a better life.

6 Increasing confidence:
People, who listen well and carefully, tend to have better knowledge and clear understanding. Therefore, they
are more confident in day to day activities and even while taking major decisions.

7 Forming a bond:
True listening generates respect and trust between speaker and listener. Employees like to respond to those
bosses who they think are listening to them.

8 Boosting productivity:
Instead of only giving an advice, if a manager listens carefully to the explanation of problems and start working
towards solution, employees will be more dedicated towards work and the productivity will rise.

9 Advancing innovations:
If a leader or a manager listens properly to the ideas of people, and motivates them to implement it instead of
controlling or curbing. This technique will show the way of new and innovative tactics of work. Listening
makes employees feel better as it recognizes not only the value of the employee viewpoint but also the value to
the employee of being listened to.

10 Enhancing accuracy:
Listening in a better way leads to a huge recollection of important facts and issues, resulting in more accuracy
while solving complex issues, with lesser miscommunication and faults.
The Purpose of Listening
There is no doubt that effective listening is an extremely important life skill. Why is listening so
important?
Listening serves a number of possible purposes, and the purpose of listening will depend on the situation
and the nature of the communication.
1. To specifically focus on the messages being communicated, avoiding distractions and preconceptions.
2. To gain a full and accurate understanding into the speakers point of view and ideas.
3. To critically assess what is being said. (See our page on Critical Thinking for more).
4. To observe the non-verbal signals accompanying what is being said to enhance understanding.
5. To show interest, concern and concentration.
6. To encourage the speaker to communicate fully, openly and honestly.
7. To develop an selflessness approach, putting the speaker first.
8. To arrive at a shared and agreed understanding and acceptance of both sides views.

Types of Listening: Active Listening; Empathetic Listening; Content Listening; Critical Listening –

According to Ralph G. Nichols, who is regarded as the father of Listening, “The most basic of all human needs
is to understand and to be understood...The best way to understand people is to listen to them”. Thus, being
listened to, is one of our most basic needs.
But Listening is not a single term which says that listener clearly understood what the speaker conveyed i.e. it is
not necessary that every time there is same understanding of the content. The response of the listener depends
on the way listening.
There are some listeners who focus too much on people, some on technical points and some on other aspects of
message. Some are so impatient that they finish your statement instead of giving time to formulate the ideas and
communicate them in their own easy way. Therefore, recognizing the types of listening is essential, as this
understanding will help mould us as listeners and make us aware which type of listening we should adopt in
various instances of our life.

Different situation require different types of listening. We may listen to obtain information, improve a
relationship, gain appreciation for something, make discriminations or engage in a critical evaluation.

Listening can be categorized mainly in the following types.

Partial Listening
Partial - the word itself suggest that this type of listening is one sided or incomplete, i.e. when partial listening
takes place people do not listen to the full content, or do not show interest in the message. This type of listening
is further divided into selective listening, passive listening & discriminative listening.

1 Selective Listening:
This is the way where the listening is done partially. People listen to that part of communication which they
really want to listen. They listen primarily for those things with which they agree or feel are important while
filtering out those points which don’t echo. The mind of the listener is wandering and is not attentive to the
message. Selective listening takes place when receiver is not in a position to concentrate or some other reason
which hinders in proper listening.
2 Passive Listening:
Silent and patient listening without interfering or participating in a talk is known as passive listening. The
listener is physically present but not participating in the communication process. The message is not absorbed
and the passive listener will not be able to recall the message in future. This type of listening takes place due to
many constraints like tiredness, ill health, lack of interest etc.
Passive listening is merely hearing the words and not the message. It leads to misunderstanding as the sender
would be under the impression that the receiver has grasped the message as intended.

3 Discriminative Listening:
It is an attempt by the listeners to listen to a particular sound which is important for them and ignores other
sounds. For Example while the teacher in the class is taking attendance at the same time students are talking to
each other, despite of so many sounds in the class room, each student waits for his/her name to be announced
for attendance as they are required to respond for their presence.
Discriminative listening may also be “identifying sounds/ voices, and making distinctions within those sounds,
such as distinguishing emotionally loaded words, or hearing fear or pain in the voice” (Bentley, S., 1998) and
responding accordingly. As words do not always communicate true feelings, the way they are said, or the way
the speaker acts may be the key to understand the true or intended meaning.

Analytical Listening
The word “analytical” is defined as “using or skilled in using analysis”. Analytical listening offers fast and
simple way to feedback. People use this listening skill when they want to critically evaluate the message, or
need to extract some information, or required to highlight the content. These uses of analytical listening are
discussed below:

1 Critical Listening:
When a listener requires specific information from the entire speech or an external speaker is invited to share
the message, one has to critically analyse the content in order to make best use of it. Therefore, the task is to
actively scrutinize the reliability, clarity and accuracy of that particular information only.
For example when a sales person describes about his company’s product and only discusses its benefits, or
might deliver positive feelings of that product and at the same time try to associate negative feelings with what
the competitor has to offer. At this point the listener should be cautious and need not to take decisions on the
basis of immediate feelings, but rather take time before concluding or before taking any actions. One needs to
analyze and evaluate the message in order to determine whether to accept or reject it.

2 Comprehensive Listening:
This involves understanding of the complete substance conveyed by the speaker. The problem is that many
people often interpret the same conversation in different ways, depending on their individual and social
backgrounds. The value of this type of listening is that the listener needs to remember the matter. It is useful
when the purpose is to extract information from the speaker. Mostly this skill is used in classrooms by students
and even at the workplace, when we listen to understand new practices or procedures for better performance.
In order to properly use comprehensive listening and to gain understanding the listener first needs suitable
vocabulary and language proficiency. Using overly difficult language or technical terminology, therefore, can
be a barrier to comprehensive listening. The ultimate goal of comprehensive listening is to understand the
message the speaker is communicating.

3 Content Listening:
It describes a situation when one has to pay attention to the content for receiving some information like
highlights of your organization or learning some technical or creative aspects. While getting information it
would not be good on the listener’s part to challenge the speaker. The focus in this type of listening should be
on gathering information, rather than making judgement. Taking notes and asking questions is important to
make the listening interactive.
Full Body Listening:
It is to listen not only with your ears but by keeping full body in a listening mode. Full body listening is very
important and is required to adapt in day to day activities. This type of listening can be done by keeping mind &
heart open, by openly using the five senses of body, and even by building an open posture while interacting.
The components of full body listening are active listening, attentive listening, visual listening & empathetic
listening.

1 Active Listening:
Complete involvement of the listener in speaker. He/ She make the conscious efforts to listen attentively,
decode the message and use it through properly participating. “Active listening is a process in which a listener
receives messages, processes them, and responds so as to encourage further communication”(Alessandra,
Wexler & Barrara , 1987).
Here the listener not only listens to the words but also understands the body language too, even shows regard
for the speaker, concentrates on what is being conveyed and in a way helps speaker to meaningfully deliver the
message. It also includes suggestions by the listener, and speaker is provided by the space to agree or disagree
with the suggestions. This type of listening is required at the time of discussions & interview process when it is
important to recall comprehend and response to the message. Colombo (2004) said, “Active listening is like a
willingness to dig even deeper when only a small silver of treasure is visible and the rest is buried under a pile
of trash”.
Complete involvement of the listener in speaker. He/ She make the conscious efforts to listen attentively,
decode the message and use it through properly participating. “Active listening is a process in which a listener
receives messages, processes them, and responds so as to encourage further communication”(Alessandra,
Wexler & Barrara , 1987).
Here the listener not only listens to the words but also understands the body language too, even shows regard
for the speaker, concentrates on what is being conveyed and in a way helps speaker to meaningfully deliver the
message. It also includes suggestions by the listener, and speaker is provided by the space to agree or disagree
with the suggestions. This type of listening is required at the time of discussions & interview process when it is
important to recall comprehend and response to the message. Colombo (2004) said, “Active listening is like a
willingness to dig even deeper when only a small silver of treasure is visible and the rest is buried under a pile
of trash”.

2 Attentive Listening:
It means, being fully aware of speakers; what they are saying; how they are saying it, i.e. the tone, pitch of
voice, what they are doing, i.e. gestures, movements, postures, etc., and receiving and interpreting the message
they are sending (Bentley, 1993). Attentive listeners have relational goals like giving a positive impression,
advancing the relationship, or demonstrating care. It is difficult and very tiring to maintain a state of attentive
listening.

3 Visual listening:
This kind of listening is used when words are strange. It generally happens when we do not understand the
language, as it may be a foreign language. Visual listening also takes place when the message is unspoken, here
the messages are understood through body movement, facial expressions, gestures, and especially with eye
contacts. Visual listening may also be the next step in online reputation management. Visual listening is the
practice of observing and tracking images and attracting customers by using creative logos with perfect colour
combinations.
Visual listening opens up a world of image-centric conversation, and, with it, a world of possibilities for
engaging customers more perfectly and efficiently.

4 Empathetic listening:
Empathy means to ‘Put your foot in another’s shoe’, i.e. to keep yourself at other persons place to understand
and realize the feeling of the speaker. Raman & Singh(2006) said, “Empathic listener is able to go into the
world of another- to see as others sees, hear as other hears, and feel as the other feels”. The purpose is to give a
patient listening to a friend or an acquaintance and allow him to talk through a problem. It involves
comprehending what kind of mental state the speaker is at the time of conversation. There may be some
personal issues, or overloading at workplace or something else, an empathetic listener will analyze the situation
and respond accordingly. Brownell (1990) have considered it to be an antecedent, in that empathetic people tend
to be good listeners.
Q: Differentiate between “Active Listening” and “Passive Listening”.
It has been calculated that most people speak anywhere between 100 and 175 words per minute. We are capable
of listening, however, to nearly three hundred words per minute. Listening is anything but basically a passive,
neutral activity. But many active processes are taking place within the listener, so we can say that Listening is
not a passive activity

Active Listening Passive Listening

(i) It is the process of converting an idea or thought (i) It is the process of just absorbing the message
into message with complete involvement. without any involvement.
(ii) Listener encourages the speaker to express his (ii) The listener discourages the speaker by
ideas enthusiastically by showing interest in the expressing boredom on his face.
speech.
(iii) It is a two way process where listener plays an (iii) It is a one way process where the listener plays
active role. no role.
(iv) Active listener never neglects the physical (iv) Passive listener has nothing to do with these
aspects of the speaker such as appearance, physical aspects as he wants to bring out no
expressions, and bodily movements as they are very meaning from the spoken words.
helpful to convey meaning to spoken words. (v) To
encourage the speaker active listener responds non- (v) Passive listener also responds nonverbally by
verbally by rolling eyes, changing facial yawning and showing boredom on face and
expressions, showing smile and in this way shows discourages the speaker.
his keenness to listen.
(vi) Active listening leads to effective and sound (vi) No scope for listener-speaker relationship and
listener-speaker relationship. in fact the speaker wants to avoid such listeners.
(vii) Active listener shows his thirst for knowledge (vii) Passive listener wants the speaker to conclude
and information by asking relevant questions as early as possible and thus no chance of building
frequently up rapport between

Q: Explain Empathetic Listening in detail.

Empathetic' is an adjective of empathy which means an ability to imagine and share another person's feelings,
experience, problems etc. These feelings are nothing but a state of mind and one can bean empathetic listener
only when he / she listens someone very actively.
This type of listening leads the listener not only to understand the message in the physical form but also to peep
in to the listener's state of mind, feelings and emotions. Here the listener has to understand the speaker's implied
meaning and intention. Psychiatrists' listening to their patients falls in to the category of empathetic listening.
Empathetic listening is paying attention to another person with empathy. [Emotional identification compassion,
feeling, insight].
An excellent technique to help one do this is called “active listening‟.
Another technique is to ask how the person feels about the situation or perhaps feels.
Empathy is not sympathy. Sympathy means “feeling for someone‟, empathy is “feeling as someone.” The most
important issue about empathetic listening in a classroom setting is when to use it.
The general rule is that teachers have a right to teach and students have a right to learn. When the teacher and
student can engage in a dialogue that does not violate their individual rights or the rights of others, then
empathy is certainly appropriate. However when either a student or another person is attempting to engage in a
dialogue that is disruptive and violates the rights of the teacher and or/students, then the teacher needs to be
assertive and bring the class back to order.

Important Elements/ Guideline of Empathetic Listening

 Build the trust
 Be attentive while listening
 Do not hurt the speaker‟s feeling.
 Allow disputants to express their emotions
 Reduce tension
 Provide problem solving environment
 Understand emotion and feeling of speaker
 Show interest in listening
 Use body language while listening
 Use words like “I understand you‟ or “I see‟
 Do not interrupt/interrogate/teach/give advice/rehearse in your own head.
 Use open ended question
 Be sensitive to emotions

Barriers to Listening – Guidelines for improving the Listening Skill

Explain Barriers to Effective Listening.
• Environmental Condition :
Environmental condition like humidity, temperature, atmospheres limits the listeners span of listening. Cloudy
atmosphere may cause the listener to sleep.

• Space Distance :
Distance between the speaker and the listener from long distance may effect the listening process. If the speaker
is speaking from long distance, the listener may struggle to grasp what the speaker is speaking. Some of the
words may be misunderstood by the listener.

• Omniscient attitude of the listener :

Many people considered themselves as „ know all‟ men .They think that they have perfect knowledge of
everything in the world. According to them listening to others is pure waste of time.. They are not listening to
the speakers because they thing that they already know what he is going to say.

• Infrastructure :
Poor Infrastructure may effect listening process. Lack of proper ventilation, light, acoustics can act as a barrier
to listening

• Speed of the speaker :

Speed of the speaker can act as a barrier to listening. If the speaker is speaking too speedily, the listeners have
no other alternative left than watching speaker . The Human brain receives sounds at a specific speed. If this
speed is not maintained properly, the listener‟s may get distracted.

• Speakers' Non-verbal communication :

Speaker‟s no use of facial expression, gestures, body language, eye contact and other factors can create barriers
to listening. If the speaker relies only on verbal expressions, the listener will be tired of constant bombardment
of words and verbal expressions.

• Voice and tone of the speaker :

The listener will feel bored and fade up to listen to monotones speech. If the speaker‟s voice is not audible, the
listener may not listen to it attentively. On the contrary, many speaker‟s maintain amonotonous tone which
irritates the listener.

• Lack of Factual Information :

Many Times listener do nor listen attentively and carefully because he does not find any factual information in
the speech

• Language of the speaker :

If the speaker is using high technical jargon and difficult words, the listener will be clueless about the meaning
of those words. They will try to find meaning of those words instead of listening to the speaker .

• Horn Effect in the Listener :

The horn effect is tendency to underestimate a person as bad in all the fields because he is bad in one of the
field. The listeners reject and nullify the speaker‟s chance to speak for more amount of time because listeners
dislike the speaker .

Q: Explain traits of Good Listener OR Que-4: Explain techniques / tips to improve good listening.

Being non evaluative :

If you are an active listener your verbal and non-verbal behavior should suggest the speaker that he is being
properly heard and understood. It should not indicate what you think about a person. The purpose is to
communicate overlooking the qualities of the speaker. The behavior of the listener should convey the
impression that you accept the person without making judgment of right or wrong, good or bad,suitable or
unsuitable. Paraphrasing (summarize) If you wish to clarify a point, you can simply summarize what the
speaker has said and enquire the speaker whether you have heard it accurately or not.

Reflecting Implications (suggestions)

In order to per sue the speaker ( to motivate the speaker) to extend his ideas, the listener has to reflect eagerness
and willingness to learn more by using expressions like nodding or through verbal means, thereby giving
positive feedback. This technique is can used by listener to get more information from the speaker in the area of
interest of the listener . i.e. to divert the speaker from his main topic.

Reflecting Hidden Feelings

Sometimes the listener have to go beyond the general feeling and contents of what is being said to unravel the
underlying feeling, intentions, beliefs that may influence the speaker‟s words .This would make the speaker
evaluated. Acceptance is conveyed more by listenersmanner and tone than by the words.

Inviting Further Contribution

In a situation where listener haven‟t heard or understood enough. The listener can respond with empathy and
understanding, prompt the speaker to give more information. The idea here is to get a better understanding of
the subject by asking questions. But the questions should be for seeking information not to interrogate or
challenge the speaker

Responding Non-Verbally
Listener can portray his image as that of a active listener by adopting certain postures, and sending non-verbal
signal which communicates the listeners interest in what the speaker is saying. This may include eye contact,
Leaning forward towards the listener, head nodding. Listener can also use some receptive utterances like
„yes‟„un-hum‟ to indicate that message of speaker is being understood.

Motivate yourself to listen

Listeners should motivate their mind to listen to the speaker carefully. They should prepare themselves to listen
to others willingly. Listening can not be forced or imposed on the person. Individual should know the value and
importance of listening.

Respect the speaker

Listeners should have respect for the speaker . They should not underestimate the speaker‟s ideas and thoughts.
Even if, the listener disagrees with some of the ideas of the speaker, they should show their disagreement
positively

Remove Horn effect

Do not underestimate a person because he has couple of flaws in his behavior . Many people are like rough
diamonds. They need to be understood carefully. The speaker ideas can be rejected or doubted by the listeners.
However listener should nor insult or dislike the speaker .

Positive body language

Listener should maintain positive body language like nod of head, leaning forward, maintain erect postures,
during communication .Moreover listener should not create any type of distractions by using unnecessary body
language. Many listeners revolve pen, notebook, or any other object in their hand.

Do not Interrupt
Listeners should not interrupt the speaker unnecessarily. Many listeners have tendency to make remarks or
comments during speech. Moreover many listeners repeat the words and expression of the speaker loudly
Improve your listening span Listeners should get training for enhancing their span of active listening. Many a
times, we have to listen to speeches or lectures for long duration. Speaker‟s use of appropriate body language
Speaker should use positive body language. Otherwise Listeners will be observing these body movements and
th ereby neglect ideas and expressions of the speaker.

Voice modulation
The speaker should modulate his voice and use different tones while speaking. It creates interesting atmosphere
in the audience and they pay more attention to the speaker . It creates an environment for effective listening

Use Simple style

Speaker should use simple expressions that can be understood easily by the listeners. The speaker should keep
one thing in mind that he should speak to „express‟ and not impress. Use of heavy technical words, may distract
the speaker and affect the process of listening.

Listening should be taught as a skill

The art of listening should be given importance in school and college curriculum. The skill should be taught to
students just like, speaking, reading and writing skills. There should be sufficient practice and opportunity to
enhance their listening ability.

Explain benefits of effective listening.

Effective listening at all level is very important for the successful running of an organization. Good listening
skills make workers more productive.
The ability to listen carefully will allow you to:
• Better understand assignments and what is expected of you.
• Build rapport with co-workers, bosses, and clients.
• Show support.
• Work better in a team-based environment.
• Resolve problems with customers, co-workers, and bosses.
• Answer questions; and find underlying meanings in what others say.
• Effective listening helps in controlling rumors which helps in preventing damage to the reputation of the
organization.
• Effective listening will improve the working condition and nurture harmony and unity among the workers and
colleagues.

Language Skill 2 - Speaking: Guidelines for improving confidence, fluency, articulation, and accent and voice
modulation while speaking. Oral communication at the workplace: Essentials of a Business conversation

Language Skill 2 - Speaking:

Speaking effectively is defined as speaking in such a way that your message is clearly heard and, if possible,
acted upon. There are two main elements to speaking effectively: what you say, and how you say it.
What you say means your choice of words. The words you might use when chatting to a friend are likely to be
quite different from those used in a formal presentation or interview.
Similarly, the way that you speak will also vary in different situations. However, there are also likely to be some
common factors: for example, whether you naturally talk quietly or loudly, and how you use body language.
This page discusses aspects of effective speaking. It also suggests ways in which you can become a more
effective speaker.

Components of speaking
1. Components of the skill of speaking.
2. 5. • As proverb says ‘practice makes perfect’. Therefore, students must practice to speak English as
often as possible so that they are able to speak English fluently and accurately. • A part of that, to speak
English, we have to know some important component. • The component is what aspect influencing how
well people speak English. • Here is the component of speaking skill according to syakur. According to
Syakur (1987: 5), speaking is a complex skill because at least it is concerned with components of
grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and fluency.
3. 6. Grammar • It is needed for students to arrange a correct sentence in conversation. • It is in line with
explanation suggested by Heaton (1978: 5) that student’s ability to manipulate structure and to
distinguish appropriate grammatical form in appropriate one. • The utility of grammar is also to learn the
correct way to gain expertise in a language in oral and written form.
4. 7. Vocabulary • Vocabulary means the appropriate diction which is used in communication. • Without
having a sufficient vocabulary, one cannot communicate effectively or express their ideas in both oral
and written form. • Having limited vocabulary is also a barrier that precludes learners from learning a
language. • Language teachers, therefore should process considerable knowledge on how to manage an
interesting classroom so that the learners can gain a great success in their vocabulary learning. • Without
grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.
5. 8. Pronunciation • Pronunciation is the way for students’ to produce clearer language when they speak. •
It deals with the phonological process that refers to the components of a grammar made up of the
elements and principles that determine how sounds vary and pattern in a language. • There are two
features of pronunciation; phonemes and supra segmental features. • A speaker who constantly
mispronounces a range of phonemes can be extremely difficult for a speaker from another language
community to understand (Gerard, 2000:11).
6. 9. Phoneme & Minimal Pair • Phoneme is the smallest phonetic unit in a language that is capable of
conveying a distinction in meaning. • In other words, phoneme is a speech sound that signals a
difference in meaning. • Consider, for example, the words “dime” and “dine”. They sound exactly alike
except for the /m/ and the /n/, but their meanings are different. • Therefore, it must be the /m/ and /n/ that
made the difference in meaning, and these two nasals are established as English phonemes.
7. 10. Minimal Pairs • Pairs of words like those above that demonstrate a single phonemic contrast are
called minimal pairs. In other words, one method of establishing the phonemes of a language is by
means of minimal pairs.
8. 11. • The Rules for Minimal Pairs: • The words must have the same number of sounds; • The words
must be identical in every sound except for one; • The sound that is different must be in the same
position in each word; • The words must have different meaning.
9. 12. Allophones • Allophone is the variants of the phonemes that occur in detailed phonetic
transcriptions. In other words, allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds (phones) use
to pronounce a single phoneme. • Allophone is non-distinctive individual variation of the phoneme. •
The use of an allophone does not change the meaning of a word. • Example: • [p] and [ph] are
allophones of the phoneme /p/ in some cases, such as: • /p/ as in pin [pɪn] is aspirated (as if pronounced
by [ph]; • /p/ as in spin [spɪn] is unaspirated (plain); • In the word paper, the first /p/ is aspirated and
pronounced as [ph], and the second /p/ is usually unaspirated and pronounced as a plain [p], like: •
[‘peɪpə(r)] → [‘pheɪpə(r)]).
10. 13. Suprasegmental Phonemes • Vowels and consonants can be thought of as the segments of which
speech is composed. Together they form the syllables, which go to make up utterances. Related to the
syllables, there are other features known as suprasegmentals. • In other words, suprasegmental features
are the aspects of speech that involve more than single consonants or vowels.
11. 14. • These features are independent of the categories required for describing segmental features (vowels
and consonants), which involve, for examples, air stream mechanism, states of the glottis, and so on. •
The components of suprasegmental features consist of: stress, pitch, intonation, tone, and tempo.
12. 15. STRESS • Stress is the rhythm of a language. In pronunciation, stress can refers to words, part of
words, or even one word in a group of words that receives the most emphasis. • Stress is one of the
suprasegmental features of utterances. It applies not to individual vowels and consonants but to whole
syllables. In the level of word, a stressed syllable is pronounced with a greater amount of energy than an
unstressed syllable.
13. 16. PITCH • Based on the aspect of articulator, pitch is influenced by the tension of the vocal cords. If
the vocal cords are stretched, the pitch of the sound will go up. • Pitch refers to the normal melodic
height of an individual’s speech. It is like a degree of highness or lowness of one’s speech. • We make
use of pitch as a part of our signaling system. Although we employ many degrees of pitch in speaking,
we use only four levels of relative pitch as phonemes. They are: • 4 >> extra-high • 3 >> high • 2 >>
normal • 1 >> low • This is to say, the normal pitch of speaking voice, whatever its actual height, is
called level 2; and from this, we make various upward and downward. These variations of pitch we
make in speaking will affect the intonation of our speech.
14. 17. INTONATION • Intonation shows how the ‘music’ of a language rises and falls over a speech. In
other words, it can be also described as a fluctuation of one’s voice, which is characterized as a
downward or upward movement of a voice or sound in an utterance as a result of the pitch variations.
Thus, the intonation of a sentence is the pattern of pitch changes that occurs.
15. 18. TONE • Pitch variations that affect the meaning of a word are called tone. The meaning of the word
depends on its tone. • Tone is shown or heard in how something is being said. It is more like an attitude
rather than being a voice pattern. Emotion has also a great deal of influence to one’s tone. By using
different tones, the words in a sentence can have different meanings.
16. 19. TEMPO • Tempo of speech is the relative speed or slowness of utterance which is measured by the
rate of syllable succession/movement, the number, and duration of pauses in a sentence. • In English,
speakers try to make the amount of time to say something the same between the stressed syllables. If
there are three or four unstressed syllable between the stressed syllables, for example, the unstressed
syllables will be spoken faster, so that the speaker can keep the rhythm. For this reason, English is a said
as a “stressed time language”.
17. 20. CLUSTERS • A cluster is when two consonants of different places of articulation are produced
together in the same syllable. • Note that clusters are determined based on the sounds, not the letters of
the words.
18. 21. • Cluster can appear in the initial, medial, or final positions of words: • Initial clusters are usually
formed by combining various consonants with the /s/, /r/, or /l/ phonemes. • Examples: • sleep ['sli:p],
green ['gri:n], blue ['blu:] • Medial clusters usually appear at the beginning of a second or third syllable
in a multisyllabic word. • Examples: • regret [rɪ'gret], apply [ə'plaɪ], approve [ə'pru:v] • Final clusters are
usually composed of a variety of phonemes including /sk/, /mp/, /ns/, /st/, and /ŋk/. • Examples: • desk
['desk], camp ['kæmp], mince ['mɪns], fast ['fɑ:st], • bank ['bæŋk].
19. 22. Fluency • Fluency can be defined as the ability to speak fluently and accurately. • Fluency in
speaking is the aim of many language learners. • Signs of fluency include a reasonably fast speed of
speaking and only a small number of pauses and “ums” or “ers”. These signs indicate that the speaker
does not have to spend a lot of time searching for the language items needed to express the message
(Brown. 1997: 4).
20. 23. Comprehension • Comprehension is an ability to perceive and process stretches of discourse, to
formulate representations the meaning of sentences. • Comprehension of a second language is more
difficult to study since it is not; directly observable and must be inferred from overt verbal and
nonverbal responses, by artificial instruments, or by the intuition of the teacher or researcher. •
Comprehension refers to the fact that participants fully understand the nature of the research project,
even when procedures are complicated and entail risks (Cohen et al., 2005:51).
Aspects of Effective Speaking
Effective speaking means being able to say what you want to say in such a way that it is heard and acted upon.
Whether you are talking to a major conference about a new scientific discovery, your children about their
behaviour, or your boss about a pay rise, you need to be able to speak effectively. This means considering every
possible tool and aspect to ensure that nothing distracts or detracts from your message.
Choosing Your Words
What you say—the words you choose—matters.
If in doubt about your meaning, your audience will come back to the words that you used and double-check
what you might have meant. It is therefore important to choose carefully, especially when you are saying
something important. Things to consider include:
 Your audience. The words you choose will be different if you are talking to 200 people at a conference,
a trusted colleague, your boss, or your children. You need to think about your audience’s overall level of
understanding of the subject, and also the type of language that you use.
 Shorter sentences are easier to process and understand. Using shorter sentences also creates urgency.
 Simpler words are also easier to understand. If you cannot explain something in simple terms, you have
probably not understood it yourself. This is particularly important if your audience are not all native
speakers of the language.
 It is worth remembering, however, that words are only a part of your overall communication and
message. The tone of voice and your body language also send strong messages.
Your Voice
Your voice can reveal as much about your personal history as your appearance. The sound of a voice and the
content of speech can provide clues to an individual's emotional state.
For instance, if self-esteem is low, it may be reflected by hesitancy in the voice. A shy person may speak
quietly, but someone who is confident in themselves will be more likely to have command of their voice and
clarity of speech.
It is worth taking time to improve your command over your voice, especially if you find it hard to speak in
public. It can even help to boost your confidence!
It is important to get used to the sound of your own voice. Most people are more relaxed in a private situation,
particularly at home, where there are no pressures to conform to any other social rules and expectations. This is
not the case in public situations when there are all sorts of influences exerted upon the way people speak.
Often people don’t like the sound of their own recorded voice - in the same way that some people don't like
photographs of themselves - they can feel embarrassed.
Most of us are not used to hearing our own voices and these feelings are totally normal. Get past the initial, ‘Do
I really sound like that?’ stage and develop a better understanding of your voice.
The more you get used to the sound of your voice functioning in a slightly more formal way, the easier it is
when doing it 'for real'. In conversational mode, individuals tend to speak in short phrases, a few at a
time. Speaking or reading aloud helps you to become used to the more fluent sound of your voice. (Speaking in
front of the mirror)
Anyone can improve the sound of their voice and the way they speak in a matter of days through a few simple
exercises, like the one above. To improve you will need to maintain a certain commitment and practice
regularly for a few minutes.
The Effect of Breath on Voice and Speech
The voice is responsive to emotions and sometimes gets 'blocked', which can prevent or hinder the expression of
a range of feelings.
When under stress an individual's breathing pattern will change. When your muscles are tense you cannot use
your lungs to their full capacity. When someone is frightened or nervous, a common symptom is tension in the
neck and shoulders. This occurs because, when under pressure, we tend to breath faster. This means we inhale
plenty of air, but there is not enough time to exhale fully and relax, so we do not get the full benefit.
Good breathing is essential for two reasons:
1. By using full lung capacity the breath will support the voice and the voice will become richer, fuller and
stronger.
 This will benefit individuals who have a small voice and who worry that they cannot be heard when
speaking to a group of people. Volume is controlled in the abdomen not in the throat, so breathing to full
strength will allow for greater control of the voice.
2. Breathing deeply and rhythmically has a calming and therapeutic effect as it releases tension and
promotes relaxation. People who are relaxed are more balanced, receptive and confident.
It is no coincidence that many religions use rhythmic breathing techniques such as meditation, yoga and
silent contemplation, and vocal release in the form of chants, mantras or hymn singing as aids to their
devotions. By easing physical tension, mental stress decreases and the mind is effectively freed to follow
creative pursuits.
Breathing Exercise
1. Stand in an easy position with your feet one pace apart, with the knees ‘unlocked’ and not rigidly pushed
back. Keep spine straight, head balanced and face muscles relaxed.
2. Breathe in to a slow count of three, then out to a slow count of three.
3. Try not to raise your shoulders as you breathe. Breathe in through your nose and out through your
mouth. Consciously think of your breath 'filling down' to the bottom of your lungs.
4. Put the palm of your hand flat against your abdomen and feel the movement. Push slightly against your
hand as you breathe in and out.
5. Repeat this exercise ten times.
Depending on how you feel after several days of doing this exercise, extend the count of the out-going breath
from three to four, five and six gradually building up to ten before you need to take another breath. Then count
out loud on the out-going breath from one to ten. Repeat five times.
By building up your control of out-going breath, you will never sound ‘breathy’ or feel you are 'running out of
breath’ when you speak to a group or a meeting.
Vocal Production
The following three core elements of vocal production need to be understood for anyone wishing to become an
effective speaker:
 Volume - to be heard.
 Clarity - to be understood.
 Variety - to add interest.
Volume
This is not a question of treating the voice like the volume control on the TV remote. Some people have
naturally soft voices and physically cannot bellow. Additionally, if the voice is raised too much, tonal quality is
lost. Instead of raising the voice, it should be 'projected out'. Support the voice with lots of breath - the further
you want to project the voice out, the more breath you need. It also needs to come from the diaphragm, not the
throat.
When talking to a group or meeting, it is important not to aim your talk to the front row or just to the people
nearest you. Instead, you need to consciously project what you have to say to those furthest away. By
developing a strong voice, as opposed to a loud voice, you will be seen as someone positive.
Clarity
Some people tend to speak through clenched teeth and with little movement of their lips. It is this inability to
open mouths and failure to make speech sounds with precision that is the root cause of inaudibility. The sound
is locked into the mouth and not let out.
To have good articulation it is important to unclench the jaw, open the mouth and give full benefit to each
sound you make, paying particular attention to the ends of words. This will also help your audience as a certain
amount of lip-reading will be possible.

Variety
To make speech effective and interesting, certain techniques can be applied. However, it is important not to
sound false or as if you are giving a performance. Words convey meaning, but the way that they are said reflects
feelings and emotions. Vocal variety can be achieved by variations in:
 Pace: This is the speed at which you talk. If speech is too fast, then listeners will not have time to assimilate
what is being said. It is also a good idea to vary the pace - quickening up at times and then slowing down –
because this will help to maintain interest.
 Volume: By raising or lowering volume occasionally, you can create emphasis. If you drop your voice to
almost a whisper (as long as it is projected) for a sentence or two, it will make your audience suddenly alert. Be
careful not to overuse this technique, though, or it will lose its impact.
 Pitch - Inflection - Emphasis: When speaking in public, try to convey the information with as much vocal
energy and enthusiasm as possible. This does not mean your voice has to swoop and dive all over the place in
an uncontrolled manner. Try to make the talk interesting. Remember that when you are nervous or excited, your
vocal chords tense and shorten, causing the voice to get higher. Emphasise certain words and phrases within the
talk to convey their importance and help to add variety.
 Pause: Pauses are powerful. They can be used for effect to highlight the preceding statement or to gain
attention before an important message. Pauses mean silence for a few seconds. Listeners interpret meaning
during pauses so have the courage to stay silent for up to five seconds – dramatic pauses like this convey
authority and confidence.

Body Language
A considerably amount of communication—some estimates suggest over 50%—is non-verbal. Tone of voice,
pace and emphasis are all part of non-verbal communication.
However, your body language is also important. This includes how you stand, your facial expressions, the way
you use your hands to emphasise your speech, and even whether and with whom you make eye contact.
There is more about how to use body language to communicate effectively in our page on Body Language. This
includes considering how far away you are from your audience, and therefore whether you need to exaggerate
your gestures to make them clearer.
The importance of congruence
Perhaps the most important aspect of effective communication is congruence.
For communication to be effective, your non-verbal communication needs to reinforce your words: the two
must say the same thing. Non-verbal communication is much harder to disguise than verbal—if you see that
someone’s body language is giving a different message from their words, it pays to listen to the non-verbal
communication first as it is more likely to reflect their real views.
You may therefore need to put some thought into how you want to use body language and other non-verbal
cues. This is particularly important if you are trying to get across a difficult or unwelcome message.

Guidelines for improving confidence,

1. Get Things Done. Confidence is built on accomplishment. ...

2. Monitor Your Progress. The best way to reach your goals, big or small, is break them into smaller goals and to
monitor your progress. ...
3. Do The Right Thing. ...
4. Exercise. ...
5. Be Fearless. ...
6. Stand-up For Yourself. ...
7. Follow Through. ...
8. Think Long-term.

Fluency,
 Fluency is defined as the ability to read with speed, accuracy, and proper expression. ... When reading
aloud, fluent readers read in phrases and add intonation appropriately. Their reading is smooth and has
expression. Children who do not read with fluency sound choppy and awkward.

There are six components of speaking to be scored;

pronunciation,
grammar,
vocabulary,
fluency,
comprehension and
task

how to improve speaking skill?

1. Don't be afraid to make mistakes. ...
2. Surround yourself in English. ...
3. Practice every day. ...
4. Tell your family and friends about your study plan. ...
5. Practice the 4 core skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening. ...
6. Keep a notebook of new words you learn. ...
7. Do a lesson at least once a day.

Confidence
1. Listen. Fight the urge to speak and really listen to people at work. You can go so far as to ask clarifying
questions.
2. Body Language. The best thing you can do to have fantastic communication skills is to keep your body
open. Open your arms & keep your legs uncrossed.
3. Facial Expressions. Relax the muscles of your face and allow your face to take on natural expressions.
Smile when you are greeting people. Allow your face to react with emotion when you’re listening to
people.
4. Repeat & Rephrase. It’s always a good idea to confirm the messages of your clients & coworkers.
5. Learn to Lead. Authority & warmth need to emanate from you. That means absolutely no whiny voices,
no upspeak, & no glottal fry.
6. Kindness Counts. There are many ways in which we can hurt people using our communication skills.
And then, there are also solutions to those communicative problems.
7. Be Concise. We lose people’s attention when we are too wordy. That’s one thing we can’t risk in the
workplace.
8. Deliver bad news with love and understanding.
9. Introversion Impacts Others. Avoiding speaking to someone may inadvertently hurt their feelings. Say,
“I never know what to say at these functions.” or tell a prepared anecdote to start the convo.
10. Eye Contact. Eye contact is essential for establishing and maintaining successful relationships.
11. Be articulate. Record yourself speaking before meetings to see how you come across. Take note of
conciseness, tone of voice, & pauses as these all impact your ability to be articulate.

Articulation,
 The formation of clear and distinct sounds in speech. Articulation refers to making sounds. The production of
sounds involves the coordinated movements of the lips, tongue, teeth, palate (top of the mouth) and respiratory
system (lungs). There are also many different nerves and muscles used for speech.

Articulation is the act of expressing something in a coherent verbal form, or an aspect of pronunciation
involving the articulatory organs.
Articulation comes from the Latin word for "jointed" or "divided into joints." So it makes sense that the word's
original definition described movement at a joint, as in the articulation of your fingers while you're typing. (The
joints themselves can also be called articulations.) This noun also describes the act of joining things in such a
way that makes motion possible.
Articulation, in phonetics, a configuration of the vocal tract (the larynx and the pharyngeal, oral,
and nasal cavities) resulting from the positioning of the mobile organs of the vocal tract (e.g., tongue) relative to
other parts of the vocal tract that may be rigid (e.g., hard palate). This configuration modifies an airstream to
produce the sounds of speech. The main articulators are the tongue, the upper lip, the lower lip, the upper teeth,
the upper gum ridge (alveolar ridge), the hard palate, the velum (soft palate), the uvula (free-hanging end of the
soft palate), the pharyngeal wall, and the glottis (space between the vocal cords).

How to improve
1. Listen to Yourself Speak. ...
2. Monitor Your Speed. ...
3. Eliminate Filler Words. ...
4. Focus on the Final Sound. ...
5. Study Other Speakers. ...
6. Speak with Confidence. ...
7. Think Before You Speak. ...
8. Address Your Weaknesses.

Voice and Accent

Voice and Accent
Voice and Accent also focuses on Accent Neutralization. It’s a systematic method which is really important to
instill a Neutral English Accent for those who have a regional touch or Mother Tongue Influence (MTI) in their
speech. V&A training gradually eliminates the mother tongue from ones speech and makes one sound more like
a global speaker.
Lets understand how it works!
Voice works with your vocal organs, pitch and articulation.
Accent is the way you speak that works with ones tone and intonation that is rise and fall of a pitch.
Below are some simple and practical tips to improve one’s voice and accent:-

1. Mouth and Jaw exercises are needed to boost speech clarity. It requires practice of opening and moving your
mouth to make sounds clearly and correctly.
2. Watching good English movies or TV shows prove to be really beneficial to improve communication skills
and vocabulary. Watching them moving their mouths and sounds they make, can help better in learning
pronunciation.
3. Listening to native speakers attentively also helps a lot. Pay close attention to their rhythm of speech.
4. Make a habit of maintaining a diary to write down the difficult words with their meanings, spellings and
pronunciation.
5. Control your rate of speech. Learn to slow down and take proper pauses.
6. Read out loud every day. Never underestimate the power of reading. Read anything that interests you. It will
make you feel more confident and focused which improves delivery that goes hand in hand with improving
your accent. Additionally, it improves memory, adds to knowledge and boosts vocabulary.
7. Record your speech. It helps you become aware of how you sound and make you realize your mistakes.
8. Trying out tongue twisters. They are phrases repeating the same groups of sounds making them difficult to
pronounce when said multiple times in a row. They work wonders with Pronunciation and Enunciation.
9. Learn the phonetic alphabets. It will help you identify new sounds. Familiarity of phonemes will help you
recognize sounds that your ear is not ‘tuned to’.
10. Get enrolled in any Voice and Accent program. Getting training from professionals will help you focus on
other factors in detail, such as; phonetics, recognizing vowel and consonant sounds , formations of sentences,
syllable and word stress, voice modulation and speech therapy.

and accent
a distinctive way of pronouncing a language, especially one associated with a particular country, area, or social
class.

1. Listen to yourself
2. Slow down!
3. Picture it…
4. Get physical!
5. Watch yourself
6. Copy the experts
7. Practice English alone
8. Find a language buddy
9. Pay attention to intonation and stress
10. Sing a song!

and voice modulation while speaking.

Voice Modulation: What does it even mean? It refers to how you control your voice when speaking. When we
speak, we are able to change the message by varying the : tone, stress on words, pitch, and changing the rate of
speech.
Effective voice modulation can mean the difference between a boring speech, and an audience captivating
speech. However, modulation is not easy, and needs to be practised.
Focus on how you speak to people in an individual setting, the shift in pitch and the tone of your voice. You
can modulate your voice by:
i) Varying the pitch of your voice: Females tend to have a higher pitch of voice, due to different anatomical
structuring. When delivering speeches, tend to stick to lower pitches. Microphones are deceiving, as you may
think it amplifies your voice. They do amplify voice, as well other articulatory mistakes, higher pitches and
breathing! So next time you have a speech using a microphone, practice with it first.
ii) Speaking slowly: I cannot emphasise enough, the power of pausing. When you pause, you are able to catch
your breath. Your pauses will also make your audience lean forwards in their chair, and wait eagerly for your
next message. Pausing is the best way to improve audience involvement and attention.
iii) Stress on certain words : When you increase emphasis or stress on certain words, you draw your audience’s
attention. Choose powerful words to stress on, so that your message is captivating and clear.
iv) Speak quietly : Use this effect when you want your audience to calm down, or to hang to your every word.
A certain way to grab the attention of someone, is through an assertive voice, rather than a loud authoritative
voice.
v)Copy others : Look at videos of powerful orators, politicians, celebrities etc. Observe the way they modulate
their voices. Practice, practice, practice!
If you would like more help with modulating your voice and winning your audience attention, drop me a line!
Oral communication at the workplace:
Good communication is an essential tool in achieving productivity and maintaining strong working
relationships at all levels of an organisation – and this has been particularly important since the Covid-19
outbreak forced many people to work remotely. Employers who invest time and energy into delivering clear
lines of communication will rapidly build trust among employees, leading to increases in productivity, output
and morale in general. Meanwhile, employees who communicate effectively with colleagues, managers and
customers are always valuable assets to an organisation and it is a skill which can often set people apart from
their competition when applying for jobs.
Poor communication in the workplace will inevitably lead to unmotivated staff that may begin to question their
own confidence in their abilities and inevitably in the organisation.
The importance of strong communication runs deep within a business.
Here are five key reasons you should be paying attention:
Team building – Building effective teams is really all about how those team members communicate and
collaborate together. By implementing effective strategies, such as those listed below, to boost communication
you will go a long way toward building effective teams. This, in turn, will improve morale and employee
satisfaction.
Gives everyone a voice – As mentioned above, employee satisfaction can rely a lot on their having a voice and
being listened to, whether it be in regards to an idea they have had or about a complaint they need to make. Well
established lines of communication should afford everyone, no matter their level, the ability to freely
communicate with their peers, colleagues and superiors.
Innovation – Where employees are enabled to openly communicate ideas without fear of ridicule or retribution
they are far more likely to bring their idea to the table. Innovation relies heavily on this and an organisation
which encourages communication is far more likely to be an innovative one.
Growth – Communication can be viewed both internally and externally. By being joined up internally and
having strong lines of communication you are ensuring that the message you are delivering externally is
consistent. Any growth project relies on strong communication and on all stakeholders, whether internal or
external, being on the same wavelength.
Strong management – When managers are strong communicators, they are better able to manage their teams.
The delegation of tasks, conflict management, motivation and relationship building (all key responsibilities of
any manager) are all much easier when you are a strong communicator. Strong communication is not just the
ability to speak to people but to empower them to speak to each other – facilitating strong communication
channels is key.
How can you improve how your organisation communicates?
With 40 years of recruitment experience, we understand the value of good communication. Below, we’ve
outlined some of the key areas where organisations can improve and enhance communication between their
teams.
 Define goals and expectations – Managers need to deliver clear, achievable goals to both teams and
individuals, outlining exactly what is required on any given project, and ensuring that all staff are aware of
the objectives of the project, the department and the organisation as a whole.
 Clearly deliver your message – Ensure your message is clear and accessible to your intended audience.
To do this it is essential that you speak plainly and politely – getting your message across clearly without
causing confusion or offence.
 Choose your medium carefully – Once you’ve created your message you need to ensure it’s delivered in
the best possible format. While face-to-face communication is by far the best way to build trust with
employees, it is not always an option. Take time to decide whether information delivered in a printed copy
would work better than an email or if a general memo will suffice.
 Keep everyone involved – Ensure that lines of communication are kept open at all times. Actively seek
and encourage progress reports and project updates. This is particularly important when dealing with
remote staff.
 Listen and show empathy – Communication is a two-way process and no company or individual will
survive long if it doesn’t listen and encourage dialogue with the other party. Listening shows respect and
allows you to learn about any outstanding issues you may need to address as an employer.
Oral communication describes any type of interaction that makes use of spoken words, and it is a vital, integral
part of the business world, especially in an era dubbed the information age. "The ability to communicate
effectively through speaking as well as in writing is highly valued, and demanded, in business," Herta A.
Murphy, Herbert W. Hildebrandt, and Jane Thomas wrote in their book Effective Business Communications.

"Knowing the content of the functional areas of business is important, but to give life to those ideas—in
meetings or in solo presentations— demands an effective oral presentation." The types of oral communication
commonly used within an organization include staff meetings, personal discussions, presentations, telephone
discourse, and informal conversation. Oral communication with those outside of the organization might take the
form of face-to-face meetings, telephone calls, speeches, teleconferences, or videoconferences.

Conversation management skills are essential for small business owners and managers who often shoulder
much of the burden in such areas as client/customer presentations, employee interviews, and conducting
meetings. For oral communication to be effective, it should be clear, relevant, tactful in phraseology and tone,
concise, and informative. Presentations or conversations that bear these hallmarks can be an invaluable tool in
ensuring business health and growth.
Unclear, inaccurate, or inconsiderate business communication, on the other hand, can waste valuable time,
alienate employees or customers, and destroy goodwill toward management or the overall business.
The following are the basic oral communication skills that a manager needs to possess:

1. Conversation skills
2. Discussion skills
3. Telephonic communication skills
4. Presentation skill

1. Conversation Skills
A manager has to converse with people on a day to day basis. For this conversation skills are needed. The
situation is usually, face-to-face.
For involving others in a good conversation, a manager needs social skills as well. Knowledge without social
skills makes conversations boring and tight. Good social skills also include smart body language such as
smiling, making eye contact and a firm handshake.
For effective conversations following points can be of great help-

Introductions
Conversation Control

Ability to notice other person’s body language and get hints of likes and dislikes
Listening actively to understand other’s perspectives
Interpreting signs and signals of others
No cross talking or arguments
Reflection of similar information, thoughts, ideas and feelings
Showing assertiveness
Appropriate turn taking by giving others a chance to speak
Showing empathy
Sense of time to end the conversation

2. Discussion Skills
Two very important skills required for a Group Discussion are speaking skills and listening skills. Other
parameters may include reasoning skills, leadership skills, initiation, assertiveness, flexibility, awareness etc.
The skills required for a group discussion are-
Articulation or language skill – what one thinks is expressed through verbal interaction and the non-verbal
cues used.
The verbal part or the language displays the clarity of thought of a person, and whether the same is
communicated to others. Aptness of language is also judged through articulation or language skills. The non-
verbal part includes ones expressions and body language. Many a
times individuals get angry if they do not get a chance to speak or if their viewpoint is not agreed upon. One
should remember that in a business environment discussion is meant to take decisions and not create conflict.
So, one should not display anger by shouting, thumping the desk or any similar act.
2. Listening skill – The ability of a person to listen to others is very important in a discussion. So, one should
try to avoid interrupting others. Also, one should maintain eye contact with the speaker to demonstrate that one
is listening. This also help in getting cues about when is the speaker going to stop. This will hel avoid cross
talking and facilitate turn taking. Speaking without listening to others makes a person a bad team player and
thus such a person is difficult to work with.
3. Reasoning skills – One has to speak relevant to the topic of discussion. Talking unnecessarily will waste
time and no conclusion can be drawn.
4. Leadership skills – A person, who is able to maneuver the low of the discussion, is named the leader. A
leader also encourages opinions from all the members. She/he should be able
to motivate the other members during the discussion.
5. Initiation – Initiative taken by a person shows his/her inclination to do work.

6. Assertiveness – A person should make his/her point in a convincing manner so that others buy the point.
7. Flexibility – Many speakers just stick to their argument and dismiss others’ opinions. In order to work in a
group, a personshould be flexible. Moreover, a discussion is done to elicit the best course of action. Therefore,
if someone makes a better point than another, the other person should be flexible enough to accept it.
These skills of discussion are used in meetings, conferences, and other decision making events where a
group communicates together.
3. Telephonic communication skills
While speaking over the phone the following points are to be borne in mind
Ensure Friendly Voice, Variation in pitch, Controlled Speaking Speed, Vocal Emphasis and Pleasant Voice
Quality
Greet, introduce yourself, company or office and find out the purpose of the call
Be considerate while putting the caller on hold
Keep up the call back promise
Listen, do not dominate
Use time efficiently
Use effective posture and gesture
Keep notepad and pen handy
Answer promptly
Pay attention
Transfer call when necessary
Follow-up promptly
Be positive
Listen Actively
Be alert
Stop talking
Put the talker at ease
Show the talker that you want to listen
Remove distractions
Be patient; hold your temper
Go easy on arguments and criticism
Ask questions whenever needed

4. Presentation skills
The public presentation is generally recognized as the most important of the various genres of oral business
communication. Business presentations tend to have one of three general purposes: to persuade, to inform or
instruct, or to entertain. These ideas should be researched thoroughly and adapted to the needs of the audience.
The ideas should then be organized to include an introduction, a main body or text, and a summary or
conclusion. Or, as the old adage about giving speeches goes, "Tell them what you're going to tell them, tell
them, and tell them what you told them."
Visual aids can be a useful component of some presentations. Whether they are projected from a PC, displayed
on chalkboards, dry-erase boards, or flip charts visual aids should be meaningful, creative, and interesting in
order to help the speaker get a message across. The key
to successful use of visual aids is that they should support the theme of the presentation. Once the presentation
has been organized and the visual aids have been selected, the speaker should rehearse the presentation out loud
and revise as needed to fit time constraints.
The delivery of effective oral presentations requires a speaker to consider his or her vocal pitch, rate, and
volume. It is important to incorporate changes in vocal pitch to add emphasis and avoid monotony. It is also
helpful to vary the rate of speaking and incorporate pauses to allow the listener to reflect upon specific elements
of the overall message.
Nonverbal elements such as posture, gestures, and facial expressions are also important factors in developing
good oral communication skills. "Your outward appearance mirrors your inner mood,"
Hildebrandt, Murphy, and Thomas say. "Thus good posture suggests poise and confidence; stand neither at rigid
attention nor with sloppy casualness draped over the podium, but erect with your weight about equally
distributed on each foot." Some movement may be helpful to
hold listeners' attention or to increase emphasis, but constant shifting or pacing should be avoided. Likewise,
hand and arm gestures can be used to point, describe, or emphasize, but they should be varied, carefully timed,
and adapted to the audience. Finally, good speakers should make frequent eye contact with the audience, let
their facial expression show their interest in the ideas they are presenting, and dress in a way that is appropriate
for the occasion.
These skills of presentation make a manager an effective oral communicator.

Essentials of a Business conversation

Advantages of Oral Communication
There is high level of understanding and transparency in oral
communication as it is interpersonal.
There is no element of rigidity in oral communication. There is
flexibility for allowing changes in the decisions previously
taken.
The feedback is spontaneous in case of oral communication.
Thus, decisions can be made quickly without any delay.
Oral communication is not only time saving, but it also saves
upon money and efforts.
Oral communication is best in case of problem resolution. The
conflicts, disputes and many issues/differences can be put to an
end by talking them over.
Oral communication is an essential for teamwork and group
energy.
Oral communication promotes a receptive and encouraging
morale among organizational employees.
Oral communication can be best used to transfer private and
confidential information/matter.
Disadvantages/Limitations of Oral Communication
Relying only on oral communication may not be sufficient as
business communication is formal and very organized.
Oral communication is time-saving as far as daily interactions
are concerned, but in case of meetings, long speeches consume
lot of time and are unproductive at times.
Oral communications are not easy to maintain and thus they are
unsteady.
There may be misunderstandings as the information is not
complete and may lack essentials.
Oral communication is less authentic than written
communication as they are informal and not as organized as
written communication.
It requires attentiveness and great receptivity on part of the
receivers/audience.
 Oral communication (such as speeches) is not frequently used
as legal records except in investigation work.

UNIT – III [ 10 Hrs]

Language Skill 3- Reading :The process of Reading; Sub skills of Skimming, Scanning, Inferencing, Guessing
word-meaning, Using appropriate speed for various kinds of reading.

Introduction:
Like listening and speaking, reading is a language skill. It is an ability to understand a piece of text either in
writing or in print (including electronic visuals).
You look at this electronic board in a railway station. The train timings and position of trains are displayed on a
screen
You pick up a joke book at the book store and leaf through it, occasionally pausing at a page.
You take out this study material, pencil in hand to mark at the points you consider important.

In all the three cases, you and reading is a piece of text.

Reading undeniably involves two necessary element, a reader and a text.
A third element is often important, namely the writer.

We shall not emphases the writer in this unit because there is a separate unit exclusively on writing.
However, it is important to state that there is a high degree of correlation between reading and writing.
The effective reader has knowledge of the writing system.
He can recognize letters in the printed form as well as the handwritten form and is familiar with the
combination of letters in spelling of words. In the above paragraph, you will notice that the word understand at
the beginning is given in italics. The word is the context of reading is a keyword. Mere reading aloud without
understanding does not count as reading. Elementary local schools practice reading aloud for other purposes.
We shall gradually go into the details of these issues in this unit

DEVELOPING READING SKILLS

Reading involves a variety of skills. The main ones drawn from John Mumbry’s,

Communicative Syllabus Design are listed below :

Recognizing the script of a language
Deducing the meaning and use of unfamiliar words
Understanding explicitly stated information
Understanding information when not explicitly stated
Understanding conceptual meaning
Understanding the communicative value of (function) sentences and utternesses.
Understanding relations within sentence.
Understanding relation between parts of a text through grammatical cohesive device.
Interpreting text by going outside it.
Recognizing indicators in discourse.
Identifying the main points or important information in a piece of discourse.
Distinguishing the main idea from supporting details.
Extracting salient points to summarize (the text, an idea etc.)
Selective extraction of relevant points from a text.
Basic reference skills.

Skimming
Scanning to locate specifically required information
Transcoding information to diagrammatic display.

In the given list, one can discover a hierarchy of the skills that indicate the fact that the reading process ranges
from recognizing the script of a language at one end of the scale to activities like selective extraction of relevant
points from a text or transcoding information.
These skills provide the guidelines for organizing classroom activities. Let us clarify the point as to how skills
provide guidelines. To do so, we have to ask ourselves the question. How are reading skills developed? These
skills are developed through the reader’s interaction with the text. The interaction depending upon the level, and
the nature of the text can be of different kinds. As one reader along there are the points that emerge sensitive in
the seminars reader’s mind.

1. Points relating to the organization of the passage, and

2. Points relating to the content of the passage.

The first point makes the reader sensitive to issues like the function of the passage the general organization (e.g.
organization/ descriptive) the rhetorical organization (e.g. contrast / comparison) the cohesive devices etc.

The second point makes the reader sensitive to issues like the plain fact of the text the implied fact if any
deduced meaning exclusion (e.g. reader’s individual response to the text).

These are the parameters that will be handled in this unit in greater detail.

Reading :

The process of Reading;

Reading is defined as a cognitive process that involves decoding symbols to arrive at meaning. Reading is an
active process of constructing meanings of words. Reading with a purpose helps the reader to direct information
towards a goal and focuses their attention. Although the reasons for reading may vary, the primary purpose of
reading is to understand the text. Reading is a thinking process. It allows the reader to use what he or she may
already know, also called prior knowledge. During this processing of information, the reader uses strategies to
understand what they are reading, uses themes to organize ideas, and uses textual clues to find the meanings of
new words. Each of the three components of reading is equally important. Let's take a look at the components!

The Reading Process

Reading is a process that involves recognizing words, leading to the development of comprehension. According
to research, reading is a process that negotiates the meaning between the text and its reader. The reading process
involves three stages.
The first is the pre-reading stage, which allows the reader to activate background knowledge, preview the text,
and develop a purpose for reading. A strategy for students to utilize during this stage is to look at the title of the
selection and list all the information that comes to mind about the title.
The second stage occurs during reading, when the reader makes predictions as they read and then confirms or
revises the predictions. For example, a double-entry journal enables the reader to write the text from the reading
on one side and their personal reaction on the other side.
The final stage occurs after reading and allows the reader to retell the story, discuss the elements of a story,
answer questions, and/or compare it to another text. For example, students can create summaries, where they
take a huge selection and reduce it to its main points for more concise understanding.
Comprehension is an intentional, active, and interactive process that occurs before, during and after a person
reads a particular piece of writing.
Reading is an active process of constructing meanings of words. Reading with a purpose helps the reader to
direct information towards a goal and focuses their attention. Although the reasons for reading may vary, the
primary purpose of reading is to understand the text.
Reading is a thinking process. It allows the reader to use what he or she may already know, also called prior
knowledge. During this processing of information, the reader uses strategies to understand what they are
reading, uses themes to organize ideas, and uses textual clues to find the meanings of new words. Each of the
three components of reading is equally important.
Let's take a look at the components
Reading is defined as a cognitive process that involves decoding symbols to arrive at meaning.
examples of comprehension skills that can be taught and applied to all reading is equally important
lets take a look at the components.
Guessing meaning
• Summarizing.
• Sequencing.
• Inferencing.
• Comparing and contrasting.
• Drawing conclusions.
• Self-questioning.
• Problem-solving.
• Relating background knowledge.

b. Skimming
Skimming is reading a text quickly to get a general idea of meaning. It can be contrasted with scanning, which
is reading in order to find specific information, e.g. figures or names.
Example
A learner taking a reading exam decides to approach text by looking at the title, introductions, and any diagrams
and sub-headings, then skim reading to get a clear general idea or what the text is about.
Skimming is a specific reading skill which is common in reading newspapers, messages and e-mails. It is
important that learners understand that there is no need to read every word when skimming, soc-
c-Reading techniques
Reading is a method of communication that enables a person to turn writing into meaning.
It allows the reader to convert a written text into a meaningful language with independence,
comprehension, and fluency, and to interact with the message.
Reading is written or printed material that can be looked at and understood
Example:
An example of reading is books or magazines
Reading Techniques or Styles are the following:
1-scanning.
2. Skimming.
3. Active Reading.
4. Detailed.
5-speed
6-Preposition,structure,evaluation
Survey-Question-Read-Recite-Review.

d- Guessing meaning
Although the skill of guessing word meanings from context is widely acknowledged as
a useful skill there has been little research in this area and very little useful guidance for teachers or learners.
This article describes a strategy for guessing meanings from context and suggests ways of practising this
strategy.
The strategy involves four steps:
1- determining the part of speech of the word;
2- looking at the immediate grammar;
3- studying the wider context (usually the conjunction relationships);
4-guessing the word and checking the guess.
A basic list of conjunction relationships is given in the Appendix. The previous research, and value
and application of the skill are discussed and suggestions are made for future studies.

e-Previewing and predicting

Previewing: Reviewing titles,heading and photo captions to get a sense of the structure and content of reading
selection.
Predicting: using knowledge of the subject matter predictions about the content.

Reading Comprehension
Reading comprehension has two elements that complete the process. The first element is vocabulary
knowledge. The reader must be able to understand the vocabulary used by the writer. The second element is text
comprehension, where the reader puts together the vocabulary and different comprehension strategies to
develop an understanding of the text. Comprehension, or the mental process that allows the reader to
understand the text, begins before the reader starts the text and continues even after the reading has finished.
There are some specific strategies that can be used to increase comprehension:

READING WITH COMPREHENSION DIFFERENT TYPES OF TEXTS

The word ‘text’ refers to a piece of spoken or written language. In the context of this unit, let us concentrate on
written language which requires “reading”. A text may consist of just one word e.g. the word SILENCE written
in the reading room of a library. It may be of considerable length e.g. a poem, a story, an essay or a novel.
We will concern, ourselves with texts larger than a sentence – texts, having a succession of separate sentences
thematically related. If reading is to be efficient, there are certain strategies that need to be followed. Most
importantly, there is the issue on reading speed. Experiments have shown that slow reading effects
comprehension. Slow readers easily get discouraged. They will also tend to stumble on unfamiliar words and
fail to grasp the general meaning. Hence there has been an effort towards teaching faster reading. Michael West
in his book Learning to Read a Foreign Language (Longman) found that training Indian students to improve
their reading in English also substantially improved their reading in their Mother Tongue / First Language. He
concluded that reading ability is a general power that can be “transferred” and shows itself in improvement of
the reading of another language. Hence, there has grown the need for developing faster reading skills for better
comprehension of a piece of text. One of the most important points that we keep in mind while reading a piece
of text is that there is not one type of reading but several secondary to our objective reasons for reading.
Depending upon the objective of reading a piece of text, readers have to adopt their reading speed and
techniques to their aim when reading. In fact there are several techniques that the efficient readers have at their
disposal and which they like to apply to suit their objectives.
Two of the techniques are skimming and scanning.

Sub skills of Skimming,

Skimming is a specific reading technique necessary for quick efficient reading. Skimming differs from general
rapid reading in that the reader goes through the text extremely quickly, merely dipping into it and sampling it
at various points to get a gist of it, to know how it is organized or to get an idea of the tone and intention of the
writer. Let us suppose a reader is skimming through the following pieces of text :
You know that I once wrote a book called The Discovery of India. I was engaged in that search long before I
wrote that book. It was not mere curiosity that led me to that search. I was engaged in many activities and I
wanted a proper reconciliation between my activity and my thought. Thought without action is undeveloped
thought. Action without thought is folly. Of course, “We sometimes act on some impulse or uncontrollable
urge. If suddenly you throw a brick at me and my hand goes up to protect myself, it is an automatic, instinctive
action and not a result of deliberate thought. Our living is conditioned by a series of automatic actions from
morning till night. Anything we do outside that common range of actions, however, has to be preceded by some
measure of thinking. The more action and thought are allied and integrated, the more effective they become and
the happier you grow. There will then be no inner conflict between a wish to do something and inability to act
or between thinking one way and acting in another. The happiest man is he whose thinking and action are co-
ordinated. Happiness, after all, is an inner state of mind. It is little dependent on outside environment. Happiness
has very little to do, for instance, with whether you are rich or not rich. Some of the most miserable persons I
have come across in my life are the rich people. It is true that poverty makes one miserable in a very acute way.
But my point is that it is not wealth but coordination of one’s thought and action which removes inner conflicts.
It is in that way that integration of personality is achieved.

As the reader skims through the text, the first thing that he does is to survey the text to find out what the passage
is about The reader’s eyes will pick up certain words and phrases like mile posts in a long road and in the
process he mentally tries to fill in the gaps. Most probably, a reader will pick up the following details.

I wrote ….. Discovery of India ….. engaged in the search long before……. many activities ……. reconciliation
between activity and thoughts

We act on impulse …. automatic instinctive action …. catching a brick ……. thrown at us……. living
conditions automatic actions …... must to proceeded by thinking.

Integration of thoughts and action …. Happiness ……. no inner conflict …. Happiness, an inner state of mind
…. nothing to do with riches …. but co-ordination of thought and action

This sort of sampling the text helps us to get a gist of it. We know that the text is organized in the form of an
article where the main aim of the writer is to emphasis on the value of coordination between thought and action.
This is the technique that we follow when we record a newspaper for example. We don’t spend the whole day
poring through every word or sentences in a newspaper. We skim through the pages, dipping into information
and thus form a general idea of what is happening where.

Scanning,
Scanning occurs when a reader goes through a text very quickly in order to find a particular point of
information. A person picks up the morning paper and passes his eyes through the pages and gives a quick
glance at the headlines and passes on to the next page. He is actually scanning the pages of a newspaper. When
a person wants some information about a train, he would not read the whole railway time-table, but look for a
particular train time. Looking through a text for particular pieces of information is termed scanning. There is a
great range of texts suitable for scannig - indixes, dictionaries, maps, advertisements, labels, various charts and
so on. Here is a chart showing many exchnge rates
Supposing you are interested in the rates of Euro dollars.
You simply let your eyes wonder over the text until you find what you are looking for:
This activity is scanning. You can even scan a piece of longer text to locate a piece of information in the text.
supposing, you are scanning through the passage given at 3.4.1. Now it is possible for you to scan the same
article in order to note down a piece of information. For example, you would like to know how the author
describe a happy person. You scan the page for the phrase the happiest man and come up with the information.
“The happiest man is he whose thinking and action is co-ordinated. Thus, scanning is retrieving what
information is useful for our purpose.

Guessing word-meaning,

Global Comprehension
Global comprehension is the understanding of a longer text in its totality. We often read a longer text, a story or
a novel for example, for pleasure and not necessarily for minute details. It is a fluency activity, mainly
involving the reader to be able to respond to a piece of text in a general sense. For example, a reader is reading
the short story titled “The Martyr’s Corner” by R.K. Narayan. He reads the story extensively for the pleasure of
it. At this stage, he is not concerned with specific details but with the overall plot of the story. He follows up the
daily life of Rama, the central character of the story, noting how he rose in business till the fateful firing
incident when he found his fortunes taking such a turn that ultimately he had to close down his business as a
career and start life all over again as a waiter in a restaurant (the story is annexes to this unit). At the end of the
reading, you may like to respond to the text in its global context. For example, you may like to know why the
author had given the title “Martyr’s Corner” to this story. You may like to react to the relevance of the title of
the story. In order to find an answer to this question, you do not try to locate information from the text. On the
contrary, you try to look at the, whole story globally. You will mentally go through the circumstances that had
prompted Rama to shift his business to another location as a result of which he lost his old customers, his sales
dropped and he had to close down his business. What you had done here is to take a global view of the story and
would now like to say something like this :
The title for the story appears to the appropriate because the martyr’s monument that was set up at the place
where Rama had his business played an important part in the fall of fortunes of Rama resulting in his loss of
business and his starting life all over again as a waiter. This is precisely a global comprehension of the story.
Global comprehension skills can also be exemplified from poetry or any other written texts. Let us take
“Ozymandias of Egypt”, a poem by P.B. Shelley.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said : Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert.
Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things.
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed
And on the pedestal, these words appear
“My name is Ozymangias, king of kings,
Look on my work e mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains; round the decay
Of what colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch a away

What exactly does the poet intends to say in this poem? When we ask this question, we are actually inviting the
listener to look at the poem globally. It is a matter of local comprehension. You understand from the poem that
the poem is developed around the theme that human achievements cannot survive the ravages of time. We find
Ozymandias as the symbol of human achievements. Nothing of his achievements had remained.

Local Comprehension
Local comprehension is the skill of reading a piece of text closely or intensely for the purpose of extracting
specific information from the text. This skill is referred to as intensive reading skill. As an example let us refer
back to the story “The Martyr’s Corner” appended to this unit and concentrate our attention in the first four
paragraphs. Earlier, you had read the story for extensive reading skills. Now, we go back to a part of the story
for intensive reading skills. In this case, you do not like to miss out the details of the passage that you are
reading, both at the levels of form and content. Let us illustrate how local comprehension works. As you read
the first four paragraphs, you may like to ask yourself a series of specific questions. Some of them could include
:

Why does Rama consider the compliments as ‘glib remarks’?

At what time did Rama get up?
At what time did he arrive at his place of business?

These are only three of a host of questions that form in your mind that aid to the comprehension of the text. You
may have to go back to the passage to locate the specific information. For example, when we focus our attention
on the words “glib remarks”, we connect them with the lines : “what these folks do not see is that I sit before the
oven practically all day frying al this stuff…….”. we now know why Rama considers the specific information
from the text for an understanding of a specific point. Such an approach to a reading activity is referred to as
intensive reading. Since, the reader is locating information, it is also referred to as local comprehension.
Similarly, the other two questions would require us to locate the specific information from the text. The
information is there very overly in the passage. All that you do is to locate it. As a reading activity it can be seen
as an activity of reading for accuracy involving a detailed understanding of the text not only in terms of “what”
it says but also “how” it says it. An intensive reading activity is primarily concerned with developing reading
strategies— judgements, reasoning, interpretation, appreciation etc. in the reader

Definition of Contextual Guessing Technique

The technique of finding the meaning of an unknown word through its use in a sentence and then guessing how
it is pronounced is known as contextual guessing or context identification, or the use of context clues. Guessing
from the context is one of the most useful skills learners can acquire and apply inside and outside classroom
and, more importantly, can be taught and implemented relatively easily Thornbury (2002 : 202)

Contextual guessing technique can help students with their reading comprehension. By contextual guessing,
students can identify important words in reading and make semantic predictions about their relationship to one
another.
As states by Linsay (2001:56) states that contextual guessing is making a guess based on the context of the
passage the students are reading. It means that when the students read a text, they often guess word meaning
without consulting a dictionary.

In line, Yang (2014: 17) also suggested that contextual guessing is asking students to underline unknown words
without looking up the meaning in the dictionary. The technique of finding the meaning of an unknown word
through its use in a sentence and then guessing how it is pronounced is known as contextual guessing or context
identification, or the use of context clues.

The context in which an unknown word is used limits the number of words that could be correct. The problem
then is to select from the possible synonyms the exact word used. When the students know the probable
meaning of the word and have two or three synonyms in mind, it is easier for them to use structural and phonics
analysis to identify the word.

Contextual guessing is asking students to underline unknown words without looking up the meaning in the
dictionary, to use contextual clues to guess the general meaning; to skip unknown words; and to focus on
cognates, roots, prefixes, and suffixes while reading a text. So, the students will not busy on their dictionary in a
reading activity and it can make the reading activity more effective. In addition, there are several clues to use in
understanding new words by contextual guessing technique according to Zhong (1993: 16), they are:

a. Roots, Prefixes, and Suffixes

According to the Oxford Dictionary, a root is the part of a word that has the main meaning and that its other
forms are based on; a word that other words are formed from. Example: „Walk‟ is the root of „Walks‟,
„Walked‟, „Walking‟, and „Walker‟.

According to the Oxford Dictionary, a prefix is a syllable, e.g. pre- or un-, placed in front of a word to change
its meaning; a word element placed at the beginning of a root.

The suffix is the word element that is attached to the end of a root or word.
Both prefixes and suffixes change the meaning of the root and form a new word.

b. Sentence Punctuation
Punctuation marks are sometimes used to set off a word which is being used to identify the word. Some of the
common punctuation marks are commas [,], brackets [ ], dashes -, single quotation marks „ ‟, parentheses ( ),
double quotation marks " ". c. Sentence Connecting Words Some connecting words indicate an opposite or
contrasting meaning in the sentence: Although, But, In contrast to, However, Even though.

The Procedure of Contextual Guessing Technique

The technique tries to solve the problem by offering some exercises, which can hopefully increase the students'
speed as well as their comprehensions in reading passages. In the technique, the students are trained to be aware
of all the words in the passage. Some experts said (as explained above) that words normally do not stand by
themselves so by drawing inferences from the words proceeding and following them, the students may guess
the meaning of the unknown words. ln the practice of the technique, there are some important ways and some
keywords that can be learned in order to get used to the guessing activity, so we hopefully can make a good
guess of them. Thornbury (2002: 148) recommends the following steps for guessing from the context:

1. Decide the part of speech of the unknown word-whether, for example, it is a noun-verb, adjective, etc. Its
position in the sentence may be a guide, as might it's ending (e.g. an –ed or –ing ending might indicate it is a
verb).
2. Look for further clues in the word‟s immediate collocates-if it is a noun, does it have an article (which might
suggest whether it is countable or not)? If it is a verb, does it have an object?

3. Look at the wider context, including the surrounding clauses and sentences- especially if there are
„signposting‟ words, such as but, and, however, so, that might give a clue as to how the word is connected to its
context. For example, We got home, tired but related: the presence of but suggests that elated is not similar in
meaning to tired.

4. Look at the form of the word for any clues as to meaning. For example, downhearted is made up of down +
heart+ a participle affix (-ed).

5. Make a guess as to the meaning of the word, on the basis of the above strategies. 6. Read on and see if the
guess is confirmed; if not- and if the word seems critical to the understanding of the text- go back and repeat the
above steps. If the word does not seem critical, carry on reading. Maybe the meaning will become clearer later
on.

Meanwhile, Karma (2004:8) stated that the steps in implementing the technique are as follow:
a. The researcher explains everything about the technique to the students. The explanations include the way in
determining time limit, how to use the technique, the important key terms, faulty habits that have to be avoided,
etc.
b. The students are given a text and the researcher will determine the time limit.
c. The students start to read the text. One thing that should be remembered here is that they are not allowed to
open their dictionary.
d. After the time is up, the students have to answer the comprehension questions, without looking back at the
text.
e. The researcher asks whether there is any unknown words, and list and lists them on the blackboard.
f. Then using the discussion technique, together they have to try to guess and later find out the meaning of the
words, from inferences in the context.
g. After knowing all the words in the text, the researcher asks them to retell the content of the passage if it is
necessary. h. They discuss the answer to the questions and record their achievement.

In implementing the technique, the researcher used the Karma‟s step and Thornbury‟s procedure to guess the
unknown word in teaching reading comprehension to the tenth-grade students of SMAN 01 Sungai Tebelian.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Contextual Guessing Technique

Adapting contextual guessing technique in teaching reading comprehension give some advantages. As Yang
(2009: 40) mentioned in his article that the benefits of contextual guessing technique are:

a) One of the favorite techniques was guessing words from the context. He examined the effectiveness of
training students on how to guess the meaning, from the context, and found that it had an indirect positive
impact on students guessing.
b) Against the direct intentional learning and teaching of reading that both learning styles supported each other
in the learning process because they are complementary activities.
c) Help the students to dare to convey their opinions.
d) Make the students will not bussy on their dictionary and focus on their reading text.
e) Develop the students‟ critical thinking

Meanwhile, contextual guessing technique also has some disadvantages in its implementation. According to
Yang (2009: 42), there are three disadvantages of using contextual guessing in teaching reading comprehension.
They are:
a) Learners would not be able to use guessing, from the contexts, in respect of the meaning of words meaning in
long sentences.
b) Guessing was inappropriate for beginners because they lacked enough quantity of vocabulary to guess.
c) Guessing words, from contexts, was an effective method for L1 learners but not for L2 learners

To avoid of the disadvantages are follows:

a) The teacher should avoid a long text to the students
b) The teacher should give familiar text to the students.
c) The teacher should give appropriate vocabulary which is familiar to the students.

Aspects of Reading Comprehension

In reading, there are some aspects related to the comprehension. This aspect is very important and students need
pay attention to it in order to help students in comprehending the text and as a requirement in mastering reading
comprehension. Hopefully, with understanding these aspects, students will able to comprehend the information
precisely.

According to King and Stanly (1989:330), there are five components are following below:

a. Finding factual information Factual information requires readers to scan specific details. The factual
information question is generally prepared for students and those which appear with WH question word. There
are many types of question; reason, purpose, result, time, comparison, etc in which of the answer can be found
in the text.

b. Finding the main idea Recognition of the main idea of a paragraph is very important because it helps the
reader not only understand the paragraph on the first reading but also help the reader remember the content
later. The main idea of a paragraph is what the paragraph develops. An efficient reader understands not only
ideas but also the relative significances as expressed by the writer. In other words, some of the ideas of
superordinate while other subordinates.

c. Finding the meaning of vocabulary It means that the reader could develop their guessing ability to the word
which is not familiar them, by relating the close meaning of unfamiliar words to the text and the topic of the text
that is read. The words have nearly equivalent meaning when it has it or nearly the same meaning of another
word.

d. Identifying references In English, as in other languages, it would be clumsy and boring to have and repeat the
same word or phrase every time the reader used it. Instead of repeating the same word or phrase several times,
after it has been used reader can usually refer to it then repeat it. For this purpose, reader use reference words.
Recognizing reference words and being able to identify the word to which they refer to will help the reader
understand the reading passage. Reference words are usually short and very frequently pronoun.

e. Making inferences Inference-making is essential to make sure that the reader is good to understand the
meaning of the text. To make the inference, the reader does not need to state every detail of the text which is not
important. The reader only integrating the statements of the text and incorporate the general knowledge on the
text. Inferences are steps in reasoning, moving from premises to conclusions.

Based on the explanation above, it can be concluded that there are some indicators of reading that need to be
learned by the students in order to make them understand and comprehend about the reading comprehension
especially about what they have read. In this research, 16 the researcher used the indicator such as finding
factual information, main idea, vocabulary, inferences, and reference to construct reading comprehension test. It
is to find out students‟ comprehend towards the reading text
Level of reading comprehension

Reading is a thinking activity involves getting meaning from the printed word or symbol. Level means different
depths of understanding, different analysis of what is meant. Westwood (2008:32) stated: “reading
comprehension is often conceptualized as functioning at different levels of sophistication and referred to, for
example, as literal, inferential, and critical”.

1) Literal Level
Literal level is when the reader understands the factual information in the text. The reader at this level needs to
find such as the main character.

2) Inferential Level
The reader needs to go beyond what has been written in the passage and draw conclusions from what does the
main character do. The reader is able to predict what may happen next, working out cause and effect when these
are not specially stated, and discovering the relationship between people and things.

3) Critical Level
The reader is able to appraise what he or she is reading. The reader at this level may think of new ideas or
develop new insight that has not been stated explicitly in the text being read.

Based on the level of reading comprehension above, the tenth grade students SMAN 1 Sungai Tebelian each of
them are in each level. But just few of them are on the third level because of that the researchers try to apply
contextual guessing technique is to help 17 students who are on the lowest level to be able to improve their
reading comprehension.

Inferencing,
In this section we move on to two other reading skills or techniques that are termed as inferential
comprehension and extrapolative comprehension. The term inferential is the adjective form of the name
inference. The verb infer means to draw the meaning from something. On the other hand, the term
‘extrapolative’ draws from the verb extrapolate in the present context means to use facts already known for
something in the future. These two terms are used here as higher level reading skills. That is, drawing inference
is a higher ability than locating information from a text. Similarly, extrapolating information is a much higher
ability than either locating information or drawing inferences because it goes to the level of applying
information in another context or situation.
Inferential Comprehension
In the context of reading, infenerring means making use of syntactic, logical and cultural clues to discover the
meaning of unknown elements. If these are words, then word formation and derivation will also play an
important part. As an example, let us take us word ‘pyol’ at paragraph 14 of the story “The Martyr’s Corner”
(Enclosed in the Annexure-A). The word is not there in your dictionary either. In this situation, as an intelligent
reader, you infer the meaning from the clues available for you from the context. “After dinner, he tucked a betel
leaf and tobacco into his mouth and slept on the pyol of his house1 . We infer from the context that.
(a) The word is a noun; it appears as the head of a noun phrase “the pyol”.
(b) Being a noun, it would refer to a thing on which one can sleep, let’s say a piece of furniture.
(c) There is only one item of ‘furniture’ in the house ‘the’ pyol.
We draw inferences that pyol could be a raised platform, something like a bed or a divan where Rama slept that
night. When dealing wit a new text, you are likely to encounter a number of unfamiliar words. In such cases, it
would be useful to make guesses and then to consult a dictionary to confirm the guess. Hence, from the
beginning, it is vital to develop the skill of inference.

Again, sometimes you may encounter a very familiar word but placed oddly in a sentence that could puzzle you.
You may go to the first paragraph of the story “The Martyr’s Corner” and locate the word “establishment” and
the expression “vision sprung out of air”.
These are two likely question that may appear in your mind.
(a) What does the author mean by “establishment”?
(b) Why is Rama’s shop referred to as “a vision sprung out of air”?

You cannot locate the required information from the text. You will have to draw inferences for the
comprehension of the word “establishment” and the expression “a vision sprung out of air”. From the story, you
know that Rama’s business was confined to some food items that just filled a tray which he balanced on his
head while coming each day for his sales. You don’t call such a small business an “establishment”. Is it
ironical? You try to infer why the author uses this word. Similarly, you draw inferences why a shop is referred
to as a “a vision sprung out of air” from the context.

A vision is a fleeting glimpse of something. Does not Rama’s shop provide merely a fleeting glimpse when the
author states ‘At eight you would not see him, and again at ten you would see nothing; but between eight and
ten he arrived, sold his goods and departed”. You draw your inferences from this context.

Using appropriate speed for various kinds of reading.

Speed reading is the process of rapidly recognizing and absorbing phrases or sentences on a page all at once,
rather than identifying individual words.
The amount of information that we process seems to be growing by the day, whether it's emails, reports and
websites at work, or social media, books and magazines at home. We likely feel pressure to get through this
information more quickly, so that we can "stay in the loop" and make informed decisions.
Most people read at an average rate of 250 words per minute (wpm), though some are naturally quicker than
others. But, the ability to speed read could mean that you double this rate.
We'll now explore some of the skills that you can use to accelerate your reading.
How to Speed Read
All speed reading techniques have one thing in common: you avoid pronouncing and "hearing" each word in
your head as you read it, a process known as as "sub-vocalization." Instead, you "skim" lines or groups of
words, as you can understand words more quickly than you can say them.
One way to stop yourself from sub-vocalizing is to focus on blocks of words rather than on individual ones. Do
this by relaxing your face and "softening" or expanding your gaze on the page, so that you stop seeing words as
single, distinct units. As you practice this, your eyes will skip faster across the page.
Then, when you approach the end of a line, allow your peripheral vision to take your eye to the final set of
words. This will help to stop pauses in your reading (often at full points), meaning that you scan across and
down to the next line more quickly.
Now let's look at three methods to boost your reading speed:
1. The Pointer Method
Utah school teacher Evelyn Nielsen Wood was one of the pioneers of speed reading. In the 1950s, she claimed
that she could read at up to 2,700 wpm if she swept a finger along the line as she read.
This became known as the Pointer method, and is also sometimes called "hand pacing" or "meta guiding."
Holding a card under each line and drawing it down the page as you read works just as well.
2. The Tracker-and-Pacer Method
This is a variant of the Pointer method where you hold a pen, with its cap still on, and underline or track each
line as you read it, keeping your eye above the tip of the pen. This will help to increase the pace at which you
take in each line, and improve your focus on the words. Whether you actually underline the words is your
choice.
Try to spend no more than one second on each line and then increase your speed with each subsequent page.
You will probably find that you retain very little information at first, but, as you train your brain and you
become more comfortable with the technique, your comprehension should improve.
Note:
An advantage of the Pointer and Tracker-and-Pacer methods is that they should reduce your need to skip back
and re-read sentences – a hindrance to speed reading that is known as "regression."
3. The Scanning (or Previewing) Method
"Scanning" involves moving your eyes quickly down the page – often down the center – and identifying
specific words and phrases as you go. These can be key sentences (often the first sentence of each paragraph),
names, numbers, or trigger words and ideas. Learning to expand your peripheral vision can help with this.
You won't read every word, but your eye will land on what is important to allow you to grasp the basic idea. It
may be helpful to use a mind map to organize the information you take in.

When to Speed Read

These techniques can all help you to read more quickly, but are they appropriate for what you're trying to
achieve?
Effective speed reading is a balance between pace and comprehension. Studies have found that the faster you
read, the less information you take in, particularly when it comes to remembering detail.
So, speed reading is clearly not the answer if you're reading a complex legal or technical document, even if you
are pushed for time. Similarly, it would be sensible to slow down if the material you're reading is new or
unfamiliar, or if you have to teach it to someone else.
When you need to understand only the basic arguments or conclusions being presented, though, using a speed
reading technique can work.
This may especially be the case if you intend to go back and re-read something more slowly when you're less
busy. In fact, one study has suggested that skimming a text can improve your comprehension second time
around.
Generally speaking, if you want to memorize something, you'll need to read slowly, at less than 100 wpm. A
normal rate for learning is 100-200 wpm, and for comprehension it is 200-400 wpm.
Speed reading is normally done at a rate of around 400-700 wpm. Anything above 500-600 wpm means
sacrificing comprehension, although this varies from person to person.
How to Improve Your Speed Reading
Knowing the "how" and "when" of speed reading is only the first step to success. Here are some more tips to
help you:
 Avoid distractions. Create an environment where there are as few interruptions and distractions as possible,
to allow you to focus fully on the words in front of you.
 Go easy. Read an uncomplicated novel or a simple online article to get a feel for which technique is going to
work best for you. Gauge how much you've remembered or understood, and set a timer to see how much
faster you are now reading.
 Cover words that you've already read. This helps you to stop your eyes flitting back to earlier words and
slowing down your reading.
 Know what you want from the text. This can be useful if you are using the skimming method, as it primes
you to pay attention when you see relevant words, sentences or phrases. You can then slow down at these
points, or circle them for emphasis, but otherwise move across the page quickly.
 Benchmark your progress. This way you can tell whether your practice is paying off. There are many free
speed reading assessments online,.
 Practice, practice, practice. You have to practice speed reading to get good at it. The more you train
yourself, the more natural it will feel.
UNIT – IV [ 10 Hrs]
Language skill 4 - Writing : The writing Process – Guidelines for composing effective business messages –
Structure of Routine and Persuasive business messages, good-will, good-news, and bad-news messages.
Features of an effective business E-mail.

Language skill 4 - Writing :

Language skills : Writing
WRITTEN COMMUNICATION
Written communication is best suited when the communicator and the receiver are beyond oral communication
medium. The executives in all organizations can maintain effective inter departmental and intra departmental
connection through messages by written words. The process of communication involves sending message by
written words. Written communication covers all kinds of subject matter like notices, memorandums, reports,
financial statements, business letters etc. This type of communication simply means a process of reducing
message into writing which is extensively used in organizations. Formal communication, must always be in
writing such as rules, orders, manuals, policy matter etc.

PURPOSE OF WRITING
The systematic filing of written communication is one of the important aspects of communication.
Filing along with indexing is necessary because of the poor retention power of human being. The purpose of
preserving written messages is to provide necessary information readily and without any delay and when it is
needed. However, the following gives the main purpose of writing the messages.

1. Future references: The limitation of human mind and poor retention power cannot be overlooked. Written
messages can be preserved as records and reference sources. Various media of communication can be filed for
future reference. Thus, keeping records are essential for continuous operation of the business.
2. Avoiding mistakes: In transmitting messages, earlier records help in reducing mistakes and errors and also
prevent the occurrence of fraud.
3. Legal requirements: Written communication is acceptable as a legal document. That is why some
executives think that even if some messages have been transmitted orally, they should later be confirmed in
writing.
4. Wide access: Communication media having become very fast, written communication enjoy a wide access.
If the communicator and the receiver are far from each other, written communication sent through post or e-
mail is the cheapest and may be the only available means of communication between them.
5. Effective decision-making: Old documents help effective decision-making in a great way.
Decision-making process becomes easier if old records are available. Because the messages provide the
necessary information for decision-making purpose.

PRINCIPLES OF EFFECTIVE WRITING

1. Unity: Unity of writing implies a condition of being one. The principle of unity applies on three levels. First,
the individual sentences must be unified. Second, the individual paragraph must be unified. Third, the totality of
the message must be unified.
2. Coherence: To achieve clarity in a written communication the principle of coherence should be there.
Relation and clarity are two important aspects of coherence. The principle of coherence applies to sentences,
paragraphs and to the message as a whole.
3. Avoid jargon: As far as possible, the writer should avoid jargon. Jargon is a language which is special to
science, commerce, technology, trade or profession. In private language with persons in the field, jargon may be
incorporated. In other cases, jargon can be used, but the only thing is that the words used must be clear to others
as well.
4. Accuracy: The subject matter must be correct and accurate. The manner in which the message is transmitted
must be correct. Accuracy in writing can be achieved by careful checking and editing.
5. Brevity: A writing should be shorter by using few words for many. Brevity not only saves the time but also
gives grace to the writing. Business communication must be brief and direct.
6. 7 Cs of communication:
Written Communication Merits
• Accurate
• Precise
• Permanent record
• Legal document
• Can reach a large number of people simultaneously
• Helps to fix responsibility.
Limitations
• Time consuming
• Expensive not in terms of postage but of the time of so many people
• Quick clarification not possible.
Seven Cs

1.4. Written Communication Skills

Written communication is the most common form of business communication. It is essential for managers to
develop effective written communication skills and to encourage the same in all employees. The information
age has altered the ways in which we communicate and place an increasing emphasis on written
communications.
To make written communication skills appropriate and effective, one needs to use the 7 C’s of communication.

1. Completeness - The communication must be complete. It should convey all facts required by the audience.
The sender of the message must take into consideration the receiver’s mind set and convey the message
accordingly. A complete communication has following features:
Complete communication develops and enhances reputation of an organization.
Moreover, they are cost saving as no crucial information is missing and no additional cost is incurred in
conveying extra message if the communication is complete.
A complete communication always gives additional information wherever required. It leaves no questions in
the mind of receiver.
Complete communication helps in better decision-making by the audience/ readers/ receivers of message as
they get all desired and crucial information.
It persuades the audience.

2. Conciseness - Conciseness means wordiness, i.e, communicating what you want to convey in least possible
words without forgoing the other C’s of communication. Conciseness is a necessity for effective
communication. Concise communication has following features:
It is both time-saving as well as cost-saving.
It underlines and highlights the main message as it avoids using excessive and needless words.
Concise communication provides short and essential message in limited words to the audience.
Concise message is more appealing and comprehensible to the audience.
Concise message is non-repetitive in nature.
3. Consideration - Consideration implies “stepping into the shoes of others”. Effective communication must
take the audience into consideration, i.e, the audience’s view points, background, mind-set, education level, etc.
Make an attempt to envisage your audience, their requirements, emotions as well as problems. Ensure that the
self respect of the audience is maintained and their emotions are not at harm. Modify your words in message to
suit the audience’s needs while making your message complete. Features of considerate communication are as
follows:
Emphasize on “you” approach.
Empathize with the audience and exhibit interest in the audience. This will stimulate a positive reaction
from the audience.
Show optimism towards your audience. Emphasize on “what is possible” rather than “what is impossible”.
Lay stress on positive words such as jovial, committed, thanks, warm, healthy, help, etc.
4. Clarity - Clarity implies emphasizing on a specific message or goal at a time, rather than trying to achieve
too much at once. Clarity in communication has following features:
It makes understanding easier.
Complete clarity of thoughts and ideas enhances the meaning of message.
Clear message makes use of exact, appropriate and concrete words.
5. Concreteness - Concrete communication implies being particular and clear rather than fuzzy and general.
Concreteness strengthens the confidence. Concrete message has following features:
It is supported with specific facts and figures.
It makes use of words that are clear and that build the reputation.
Concrete messages are not misinterpreted.
6. Courtesy - Courtesy in message implies the message should show the sender’s expression as well as should
respect the receiver. The sender of the message should be sincerely polite, judicious, reflective and enthusiastic.
Courteous message has following features:
Courtesy implies taking into consideration both viewpoints as well as feelings of the receiver of the
message.
Courteous message is positive and focused at the audience.
It makes use of terms showing respect for the receiver of message.
It is not at all biased.
7. Correctness - Correctness in communication implies that there are no grammatical errors in communication.
Correct communication has following features:
The message is exact, correct and well-timed.
If the communication is correct, it boosts up the confidence level.
Correct message has greater impact on the audience/ readers.
It checks for the precision and accurateness of facts and figures used in the message.
It makes use of appropriate and correct language in the message.

Awareness of these 7 C’s of communication makes one an effective communicator.

Writing skills include the following:
1. Understanding Purpose, Style and Format
2. Using proper mechanics of writing
3. Using the correct format
4. Making the right impact
1. Understanding Purpose, Style and Format
Lesikar introduces the necessity of audience-centric writing. This means writing for specific audience keeping
in view their respective profiles.
The purpose of language is to inform, enquire, attract, influence, regulate, and entertain. The following can be
cited as examples:
“The earth moves round the sun, so it is called a planet of the sun. There are other planets of the sun such as
Venus, Jupiter,
Mars and others.” (The purpose is to inform)
“ Where are you going?” (The purpose is to enquire)
“Free! Free! Free! Avail free gifts at GMG stores.”(The purpose is to attract)
“200 bike accidents in 20 days…a record…a history.
The average age of the drivers is 15…Minors biking out in the streets without proper traffic training is what is
creating this dreadful scene. Isn’t it time to say, ‘Enough is enough?’
Don’t you think it’s time to stop our children from venturing before there is another accident? (The purpose is
to influence)
“Take a left turn from here and go straight until you reach the end of the road. Take a right turn from there
to reach the station square.” (The purpose is to regulate)
Ram: Shyam, why isn’t your watch working today?
Shyam: Because today is Sunday. (The purpose is to entertain)
Language is also used to seek permission, request, greet, console, persuade, record etc… There are different
styles of writing depending on the need purpose and audience. Some styles include creative style for literature,
communicative style for business, persuasive style for marketing and sales, legal style for law and journalistic
style for media. In fact, within business style there are methods like KISS, BIF,
BILL and FEEL that are important to address different needs of the receiver.
2. Mechanics of writing
The written document consists of the words, the structure and the punctuation. These elements provide the
document a meaningful shape. The basics of English language is given below-
3. Creating the right impression
Writers, in the business context, must always consider their target public and respect the four most important
rules of writing. These four rules are related to the KISS principle (Keep It Short and Simple),
BIF principle (Big Idea First), BILL principle (Big Idea Little Later) and FEEL principle (Factual, Emotional,
and Empathetic Language)
The KISS principle of writing encourages simple and short sentences so that the communication is effective
between the communicators. It is important that before one begins writing, there should be some
focus on “who, what, when, where and why”. This approach helps keeping the text to the point. For example in
the following case:
The BIF style focuses on the Big Idea First. In fact, it insists that if good news is to be delivered, let the main
idea be written in the beginning. Good news should never be given in a roundabout or a camouflaged manner.
The reader feels delighted to receive good news messages that are direct and emphatic.

“BILL” means “Big idea a little later”. In case of a bad news, this formula prepares a reader to take the shock by
cushioning the first part; the next part is the regret statement, and finally the minor points with a touch of
empathy. This done to maintain the human touch that is so vital for communication. Thus, BILL style is useful
while communicating bad news like inability to do something, unhappiness, displeasure and so on. However,
this method should not be confused with issuing of a warning letter that is for official record.
FEEL is a style where one appropriately matches the readers’ opinions, feelings and rationale. This style helps
in writing message that are in line with the emotions of the readers and appeals to their logic as well. FEEL
refers to Factual, Emotional, and Empathetic Language. It means that the writer needs to understand the
expectation of the reader and match the same. This style is useful when it comes to addressing complaints and
grievances. In such kind of correspondence, the reader looks for right logic and appropriate emotions.
Following is an example of a letter that exhibits FEEL style.
Advantages of Written Communication
Written communication helps in laying down apparent principles, policies and rules for running of an
organization.
It is a permanent means of communication. Thus, it is useful where record maintenance is required.
It assists in proper delegation of work and responsibilities.
Written communication is more precise and explicit.
Effective written communication develops and enhances an organisation’s image.
It provides ready records and references.
Legal defense depends on written records as it provides valid records.
Disadvantages of Written Communication
Written communication does not save upon the costs. It costs huge in terms of stationery and the manpower
employed in writing/typing and delivering letters.
Also, if the receivers of the written message are separated by distance and if they need to clear their doubts,
the response is not spontaneous.
 Written communication is time-consuming as the feedback is not immediate. The encoding and sending of
message takes time.
Effective written communication requires great skills and competencies in language and vocabulary use.
Poor writing skills and quality have a negative impact on organization’s reputation.
Too much paper work and e-mails burden is involved.
Face to face communication (meetings, lectures, conferences, interviews, etc.) is significant so as to build a
rapport and trust. But writing is more unique and formal than speech. Effective writing involves careful choice
of words, their organization in correct order in sentences formation as well as cohesive composition of
sentences. Also, writing is more valid and reliable than speech. But while speech is spontaneous, writing causes
delay and takes time as feedback is not immediate.

The writing Process –

Guidelines for composing effective business messages –

 Be accurate. ...
 Be brief. ...
 Be clear. ...
 Be genuine. ...
 Speak their language. ...
 Put yourself in their shoes. ...
 Watch out for a “knowledge gap.” Don't assume recipients have the same knowledge about your product or
service you do. ...
 Write business emails as letters, not as ads.
Writing a business email
As with any email, a business email should include a brief but descriptive subject line, one or more recipients,
and an attachment if needed. If you are including multiple recipients, consider using the CC (carbon copy)
field to keep the extra recipients in the loop without requiring them to respond. To learn more about the basic
parts of an email, take a look at our lesson on common email features.
When you start writing the main content of the email, there's a simple and effective structure you can follow:
 Greeting: Make it brief and friendly, and address the recipient by name if you know it. For
instance, “Hi Jonathan” or “Greetings Ms. Childress” are both reliable introductions. The first
name is preferable if you're more familiar with the recipient, while you should use their last
name if you want to be more formal.
 Body: Start with your main point so no one has to hunt for it, and keep your writing concise
and focused on the concerns of your audience. If you need a response from the recipient, make
sure to include a call to action so they know how and why to respond. Also, if you've attached
a file, be sure to mention it here.
 Ending: Offer a quick farewell, such as “Thanks” or “Sincerely”, then give your name and
contact information in case they have questions.
Revision
Although email is meant to be quick, always take time to revise your writing before you click Send. Review
your spelling and grammar, and confirm the accuracy of any facts you present. If you read the email aloud, you
may find additional errors or realize that your words are missing a professional tone.
Make sure any attachments you mention are actually attached, and confirm that any included web links are
correct. Broken links, missing attachments, and incorrect information only slow things down and force you to
send correction emails.
Examples of business emails
To demonstrate the principles of this lesson, let's look at two examples of business emails. First, let's start with a
poor example.

The example above is looking rough. The subject line is vague, the body is full of spelling errors and rambling
thoughts, and the main point is difficult to find. Plus, the overall tone is unprofessional.
Now let’s take a look at a more polished example.
This example looks good! The subject line grabs your attention, the body is concise and error-free, and there’s a
clear call to action. Emails like these help businesses run smoother and more efficiently.
Writing concise emails is a key skill in the professional world, which you can develop through consistent
practice. Keep writing and learning, and you'll become a more effective communicator with each email you
create.

Structure of Routine and Persuasive business messages, good-will, good-news, and bad-news messages.

Communication is central to getting things done at work. There’s no doubt that routine email messages are
the mainstay of information-sharing in the workplace, although business communication is also handled
through text messages and in-person meetings. Campaign Monitor reports that most employees receive an
average of 121 emails each day. Some emails follow routine spoken messages as a way to solidify what was
shared. Others may serve as a virtual pat on the back or a message that insists on improved work
performance.
Sharing Routine Information
The most common message sent in the workplace focuses on sharing basic information. Sharing passive
information or an action request falls under this category. You may also send an instructional email that
provides details about a new assignment or a policy change in the organization. The format that you use for
routine informational emails can affect how your employees digest the content of the message. Consider this
example of a routine message example for sharing information:
Opening:
Good Morning. Find attached to this email our new policy on employee overtime. Please review it in detail,
so that you’re aware of the changes to our current policies and procedures.
Body:
We developed this policy to provide clarification about the approval process for overtime and the limit on
additional compensation for each employee. This policy is active immediately.
Closing:
If you have any questions about this new policy, please talk to your supervisor or contact human resources. It
is our goal to have transparent communication about all of our policies and procedures.
Sharing Bad News
Bad news comes in many forms, but most organizational leaders manage this type of message at some point.
If you have to deliver a negative message to an employee or an entire workforce, consider your audience and
 the most effective way to share the information. If you’re providing performance feedback or terminating an
employee, meet in a private office.
The Society for Human Resource Management emphasizes the importance of being direct with your message.
You may feel inclined to skirt the issue, but open and transparent communication is the best course of action
for a negative message. Resist the urge to pad a negative message with something positive. You may cloud
the issue if you use filler to soften your approach.
Persuasive Messages Are Compelling
Even if you aren’t in sales, the art of persuasion is critical in business communication. You may convey a
persuasive message in an email, letter or meeting. Routine communication examples that are persuasive
include budget proposals, sales pitches, marketing plans, client acquisition and new project initiatives.
Important topics that you should cover in a persuasive message include:
 Be creative with your opening statement.
 Build interest in the body of your argument.
 Provide convincing facts about your proposal.
 Include testimonials or reviews.
 Review the benefits.
 Provide an action-oriented closing message.
Feel-Good Messages Make a Difference
Sending a positive message to an employee or colleague is satisfying. Messages of this nature should be clear
and to the point. A brief, often spontaneous message of encouragement builds morale and encourages hard
work and loyalty. If you’re sending a routine email that recognizes a job well done, it should include the
following:
 A specific description of the purpose of the message
 A rationale for why the work was important
 A closing statement that encourages continued excellence
It’s important to focus on the recipient of this message. You also want to point out the behavior that you are
commending with an empowering tone. Finally, keep the message short and authentic in tone.

1. Write routine message types such as information shares, requests, and replies; complaints and claims; and
recommendation and goodwill messages
2. Organize and write persuasive messages
i. Outline the structure of a persuasive message
ii. Explain the importance of persuasion in professional contexts
3. Organize and write negative messages
i. Outline the structure of an indirect-approach bad-news message
ii. Explain the importance of communicating bad news carefully in professional contexts
The vast majority of the couple hundred billion business emails sent every day (see §6.1 above) are short
messages of a routine nature such as asking for and sharing information, requesting action, or thanking someone
for something given. Most of the time these are positive or neutral messages even when they involve small
complaints or claims where you request that an error be corrected. These are all direct-approach messages
where the main idea comes right upfront and details follow. Occasionally, you must communicate bad news in
writing, which requires a more careful, indirect approach. All of these situations involve conventions that
business professionals follow to minimize miscommunication and its fallout, and thus keep their operation
running smoothly. In this chapter, we continue our applied-writing unit by examining the conventions for the
following everyday message types:
 8.1: Information Shares, Action Requests, and Replies
 8.2: Complaints and Claims
 8.3: Negative Messages
 8.4: Persuasive Messages
 8.5: Goodwill Messages and Recommendations
8.1: INFORMATION SHARES, ACTION REQUESTS, AND REPLIES
8.1.1: INFORMATION SHARES
Perhaps the simplest and most common routine message type is where the sender offers up information that
helps the receiver. These may not be official memos, but they follow the same structure, as shown in Table
8.1.1 below.
TABLE 8.1.1: OUTLINE FOR INFORMATION SHARES
Outline Content Example Message

1. Opening Main point of information Hi Karin,

I just saw a CFP for a new funding opportunity
you can apply for via the Ministry of Agriculture.

2. Body Information context and Find it on the Greenbelt Fund’s Local Food
further details Literacy Grant Stream page. If you haven’t
already been doing this, you should also check out
the Ministry’s general page on Funding Programs
and Support to connect with any other grants etc.
relevant to the good work you do.

3. Closing Action regarding the It looks like the deadline for proposals is at the
information end of the week, though, so you might want to get
on it right away.
Good luck!
Shradha
Notice here how the writer made the reader’s job especially easy by providing links to the recommended
webpages using the hyperlinking feature (Ctrl. + K) in their email.
Replies to such information shares involve either a quick and concise thank-you message (see §8.5.2 below) or
carry the conversation on if it’s part of an ongoing project, initiative, or conversation. Recall that you should
change the email subject line as the topic evolves (see §6.1.3 above). Information shares to a large group, such
as a departmental memo to 60 employees, don’t usually require acknowledgement. If everyone wrote the sender
just to say thanks, the barrage of reply notifications would frustrate them as they try to carry on their work while
sorting out replies with valuable information from mere acknowledgments. Only respond if you have valuable
information to share with all the recipients or just the sender.

8.1.2: INFORMATION OR ACTION REQUESTS

Managers, clients, and coworkers alike send and receive requests for information and action all day. Because
these provide the recipient with direction on what to do, the information that comes back or action that results
from such requests can only be as good as the instructions given. Such messages must therefore be well
organized and clear about expectations, opening directly with a clearly stated general request (see §4.1.1 on
direct-approach messages)—unless you anticipate resistance to the request (see §4.1.2 on indirect-approach
messages)—and proceeding with background and more detailed instruction if necessary as we see in Table
8.1.2 below.
TABLE 8.1.2: OUTLINE FOR DIRECT INFORMAT ION OR ACTION REQUESTS
Outline Content Example Message

Subject Line 3- to 7-word title Website update needed by Monday

1. Opening Main question or action Hello, Mohamed:

request Could you please update the website by adding
 the new hires to the Personnel page.

2. Body Information or action We’ve hired three new associates in the past few
request context, plus further weeks. With the contents of the attached folder
details that contains their bios and hi-res pics, please do
the following:
1. Proof the bios using Track Changes and send
them to me.
2. Post the proofed bios on the site right away and
call me as soon as they’re up. I’m sure your
edits will be fine, but I’d like to just quickly
read them and suggest further edits over the
phone if need be since time is of the essence
here.
3. Downsize the pics to 72dpi and crop them so
they’re the same dimensions as the other
portraits on that page before posting them along
with the bios.

3. Closing Deadlines and/or submission Sorry for the short notice, but could we have this
details update all wrapped up by Monday? We’re
meeting with some investors early next week and
we’d like the site to be fully up to date by then.
Much appreciated!
Sylvia
Note that, because you’re expecting action to come of the request rather than a Yes or No answer, the opening
question doesn’t require a question mark (see §5.3.10 above). Never forget, however, the importance of saying
“please” when asking someone to do something (see §[Link] above for more on courteous language). Notice
also that lists in the message body help break up dense detail so that request messages are more reader-friendly
(see §4.6.5 above). All of the efforts that the writer of the above message made to deliver a reader-friendly
message will pay off when the recipient performs the requested procedure exactly according to these clearly
worded expectations.
[Link]: INSTRUCTIONAL MESSAGES
Effective organization and style are critical in requests for action that contain detailed instructions. Whether
you’re explaining how to operate equipment, apply for funding, renew a membership, or submit a payment, the
recipient’s success depends on the quality of the instruction. Vagueness and a lack of detail can result in
confusion, mistakes, and requests for clarification. Too much detail can result in frustration, skimming, and
possibly missing key information. Profiling the audience and gauging their level of knowledge is key
(see §2.2.4 above on analyzing your audience) to providing the appropriate level of detail for the desired results.
Look at any assembly manual and you’ll see that the quality of its readability depends on the instructions being
organized in a numbered list of parallel imperative sentences. As opposed to the indicative sentences that have a
grammatical subject and predicate (like most sentences you see here), imperative sentences drop the subject (the
doer of the action, which is assumed to be the reader in the case of instructions). This omission leaves just the
predicate, which means that the sentence starts with a verb (see #2 in Table 4.3.1 on the four sentence moods
for more on imperative sentences). In Table [Link] below, for instance, the reader can easily follow the
directions by seeing each of the six main steps open with a simple verb describing a common computer
operation: Copy, Open, Type, Paste (twice), and Find.
If you begin any imperative sentence with a prepositional (or other) phrase to establish some context for the
action first (such as this imperative sentence does), move the adverb after the verb and the phrase to the end of
the sentence. (If the previous sentence followed its own advice, it would look like this: Move the adverb after
the verb and the phrase to the end of the imperative sentence if you begin it with a prepositional (or other)
phrase to establish some context for the action first.) Finally, surround the list with a proper introduction and
closing as shown in Table [Link] below.
TABLE [Link]: OUTLINE FOR INSTRUCTIONAL MESSAGES
Subject Line Content Example Email Message

Subject Line Procedure name How to find an undated webpage date

1. Opening Reader benefits Hi team,

Would you like to learn a nifty little hack that can
help you find information you need for properly
crediting your sources? Please find below
instructions for how to discover the date that a
webpage was posted or last updated if it doesn’t
say so itself.

2. Context Context for the procedure Sometimes you need to know when exactly a
webpage was posted or updated, but it either
doesn’t say or has a copyright notice at the bottom
with the present year, and you know it was posted
years ago, so that’s not accurate. Rather than
indicate “n.d.” (for “no date”) when citing and
referencing a source in APA style, you can instead
find out the actual date with a clever little trick.

3. Instructions Introductory clause and To find the exact date that the webpage was
numbered list, each with an posted or last updated, please follow the
imperative sentence procedure below in your Google Chrome browser:
(beginning with a verb) 1. Copy the entire URL (web address) of the
webpage you would like to find the date for by
keying Alt. + D and Ctrl. + C.
2. Open up a new tab in the Google Chrome
browser.
3. Type “inurl:” in the “Search Google or type
URL” field in the middle of the page.
4. Paste (Ctrl. + V) the webpage URL
immediately after “inurl:” (with no space
between them) and hit the Enter (or Return)
key; the web address will move up into the
address bar and, after hitting Enter, you will see
a list of search results, the top result of which
should be the webpage you’re looking for.
5. Paste &as_qdr=y15 at the very end of the
search results page web address with no space
between the URL and the above code, then hit
the Enter key again.
6. Find the date in grey text on the third line of the
first result of the new search results page, just
below the title of the page in purple on the first
line and URL in green on the second.
 7. Adjust the controls (e.g., the date range so that
it starts at a date earlier than 15 years ago)
above if the results page says “Your search –
[URL] – did not match any documents.”

4. Closing Specific action request, If you encounter a webpage where this hack
closing thought, summary, doesn’t work at all, go with the year given in the
or deadline with a reason copyright notice at the bottom or “n.d.” in your
citation and reference if it doesn’t even have a
copyright year.
Good luck,
Nolan
Though helpful on its own, the above message would be much improved if it included illustrative screenshots at
each step. Making a short video of the procedure, posting it to YouTube, and adding the link to the message
would be even more effective.
Combining DOs and DON’Ts is an effective way to help your audience complete the instructed task without
making common rookie mistakes. Always begin with the DOs after explaining the benefits or rewards of
following a procedure, not with threats and heavy-handed Thou shalt nots. Most people are better motivated by
chasing the carrot than fleeing the stick (see §[Link].2 above and §[Link] below). You can certainly follow up
with helpful DON’Ts and consequences if necessary, but phrased in courteous language, such as “For your
safety, please avoid operating the machinery when not 100% alert or you may risk dismemberment.”
[Link]: INDIRECT INFORMATION OR ACTION REQUESTS
If you expect resistance to your request because you’re asking a lot of someone, perhaps because you know
what you’re asking goes against company policy, an indirect approach is more effective (see §4.1.2 on indirect
message organization). Ideally, you’ll make such persuasive pitches in person or on the phone so that you can
use a full range of verbal and non-verbal cues (see §8.4 below on persuasive messages). When it’s important to
have them in writing, however, such requests should be clear and easy to spot, but buffered by goodwill
statements and reasonable justifications, as shown in Table [Link] below.
TABLE [Link]: OUTLINE FOR INDIRECT INFORMATION OR ACTION REQUESTS
Outline Content Example Message

Subject Line Strategically vague Furnace repair needed

1. Opening Buffer pleasantries Hello Mike,

We’ve been nothing but impressed by the furnace
and air conditioner installed by Redmond Heating
& Air five years ago. We’ve recommended you to
several friends because of your exceptional
customer service.

2. Context Background justification A few days ago, however, our furnace suddenly
stopped working. It’s a bit of a mystery because
we’ve been changing the filter regularly every
month for the past five years and had you in here
for regular check-ups every year, as per the terms
of the warranty. When we checked the warranty,
however, we saw that it expired a week ago. Talk
about bad timing!
3. Main point Information or action Given that we’ve been such responsible and loyal
request, to which you will customers, and that we’ve sent business your way
expect some resistance a few times, we’re wondering if we can still get
you out here to repair the furnace under the terms
of the warranty. Can we pretend that it’s expiring
next week instead of last week?

4. Closing Deadlines and/or I know this must be a busy time for you and we’re
implementation details asking a lot already, but since it’s starting to drop
below zero outside and probably won’t take long
to do the same inside here, could you please come
as soon as possible.
We’d be forever in your debt if you could help us
out here!
Many thanks,
Belinda
8.1.3: REPLIES TO INFORMATION OR ACTION REQUESTS
When responding to information or action requests, simply deliver the needed information or confirm that the
action has been or will be completed unless you have good reasons for refusing (see §8.3 below on negative
messages). Stylistically, such responses should follow the 6 Cs of effective business style (see §4.5.2 above),
especially courtesies such as prioritizing the “you” view (§[Link].1), audience benefits (§[Link].2), and saying
“please” for follow-up action requests (§[Link]). Such messages are opportunities to promote your company’s
products and services. Ensure the accuracy of all details, however, because courts will consider them legally
binding, even in an email, if disputes arise—as the Vancouver Canucks organization discovered in a battle with
Canon (Smith, 2015). Manager approval may therefore be necessary before sending. Organizationally, a
positive response to an information request delivers the main answer in the opening, proceeds to give more
detail in the body if necessary, and ends politely with appreciation and goodwill statements, as shown in Table
8.1.3 below.
TABLE 8.1.3: OUTLINE FOR POSITIVE REPLIES TO INFORMATION OR ACTION
REQUESTS
Outline Content Example Message

Subject Line 3- to 7-word title Re: Accommodation and conference rooms for
250 guests

1. Opening Main information or action Greetings, Mr. Prendergast:

confirmation Thank you so much for choosing the Vancouver
Marriott for your spring 2020 sales conference.
We would be thrilled to accommodate 250 guests
and set aside four conference rooms next May 25
through 29.

2. Body Further details In answer to your other questions:

 Yes, all 250 of your guests can dine together in
our Nootka Banquet Hall in a variety of table
configurations to suit your needs.
 Certainly, you can choose from among six
conference rooms with 100-seat capacities, as
well as a variety of other smaller rooms. Each has
 a large screen with a podium equipped with an
audio-visual presentation console; presenters can
either plug their USBs into the Windows-based
console computer or connect their laptops with the
HDMI cable.
 Every guest suite has wifi and each of our hotel’s
30 floors has a business lounge equipped with 10
computer work stations (5 PCs and 5 Macs),
multifunctional phone/faxes, and printer/copiers.
 Yes, we have a fleet of five shuttles that can
transport 10 guests (plus luggage) at a time from
the airport as flights arrive and back as they
depart.

3. Closing Deadlines and/or action You can visit our website at

details [Link] for additional
information about our facilities such as gyms, a
spa, and both indoor and outdoor swimming
pools. Call us at 1-604-555-8400 if you have
additional questions.
Please book online as soon as possible to ensure
that all 250 guests can be accommodated during
your preferred date range. For such a large
booking, we encourage you to call also during the
booking process.
Again, we are very grateful that you are
considering the Vancouver Marriott for your
conference.
We look forward to making your stay memorable.
Rufus Killarney, Booking Manager
Vancouver Hilton

8.2: COMPLAINTS AND CLAIMS

Business doesn’t always go smoothly. Customers can be disappointed with a faulty product or poor service;
shipments might get damaged on route, lost, or arrive late; or one business might infringe on the rights and
freedoms of another. In all such cases, the offended party’s responsibility is to make the offending party aware
of what went wrong and what they want done about it. Indeed, it’s their consumer right to do so and the
business or organization receiving such a message should take it as valuable intelligence on customer
expectations that must be met for the operation to be viable.
A claim explains what went wrong and demands compensation from the offending party, whereas
a complaint explains what went wrong and merely demands correction or apology. Minor complaints are best
communicated in person, on the phone, or by email (if it’s important to have them in writing) so they can be
dealt with quickly. More serious complaints or claims are delivered as formal letters to lay down a paper trail in
case they need to be used as evidence in a lawsuit.
Though some believe that a strongly worded complaint or claim is an effective way of getting what they want,
you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar (Michael, 2007, #3). In other words, if you are nice about
communicating your problem with a situation or business transaction, the customer service representative
(CSR) or manager dealing with it is more likely to give you what you want. Just because some customers have
 found success bullying people who are only trying to do their jobs, not all such attempts will likewise succeed,
nor is it right from a moral standpoint, especially when the abused CSR had nothing to do with the complaint.
Ineffective complaints or claims often merely vent frustrations, issue threats, don’t say what they want or only
vaguely imply it, or demand completely unreasonable compensation. Demanding a lifetime supply of milk from
your grocery store because one carton happened to be rotten will result in nothing because the manager or CSR
will dismiss it altogether as being ridiculous opportunism. Threatening to shop elsewhere makes you sound like
a lost cause and therefore not worth losing any more time or money on. Since such messages are usually
aggressive (or passive-aggressive) in tone and therefore rude and offensive, the recipient may respond
aggressively in turn, give the complainant much less than what they asked for (e.g., a mere apology rather than
compensation or replacement), or ignore the complaint altogether. Often the reader of such messages is not the
one at fault, so a hostile message would be especially ineffective and possibly even actionable in extreme
cases—i.e., liable to cause damages that the recipient could pursue compensation for in court.
Assume that a business will take your complaint or claim seriously if it’s done right because, no matter what the
industry, companies are rightly afraid of losing business to negative online reviews. According to one study,
even one negative review can cost a business 22% of customers and three negative reviews 59% (Arevalo,
2017). One mother’s endorsement or warning to others about a local store in a local moms group on Facebook
could make or break that business. Even worse, complaints aired on Facebook or Twitter, shared widely to the
point of going viral, and picked up by news outlets can destroy all but the too-big-to-fail companies or at least
to serious damage to their brand. In this age of social media, good customer service is crucial to business
survivability. A complaint provides a business with both valuable information about customer expectations and
an opportunity to win back a customer—as well as their social network if a good endorsement comes of it from
the now-satisfied customer—or else risk losing much more than just the one customer.
Effective complaints or claims are politely worded and motivated by a desire to right wrongs and save the
business relationship. They’re best if they remind the business that you’ve been a loyal customer (if that’s true)
and really want to keep coming back, but you need them to prove that they value your business after whatever
setback prompted the complaint. If the writer of such messages plays their cards right, they can end up getting
more than they originally bargained for.
Complaints and Claims Topics
 8.2.1: Complaint or Claim Message Organization
 8.2.2: Replying to Complaints or Claims
8.2.1: COMPLAINT OR CLAIM MESSAGE ORGANIZATION
Complaints and claims take the direct approach of message organization even though they arise from
dissatisfaction. They follow the usual three-part message organization we’ve seen before (see §4.1 and §6.1.5 –
§6.1.7 above):
1. Opening: To be effective at writing a complaint or claim, be clear, precise, and polite about what you want in
the opening. If you want financial compensation or a replacement product in the case of a claim, be clear
about the amount or model. You could also suggest equivalent or alternative compensation if you stand a
poor chance of getting exactly what you want. If you want an error corrected or an apology in response to
your complaint, be upfront about it.
2. Body: The message body justifies the request with a narrative account of what should have happened versus
what actually happened instead. Be objective in writing the account because an angry tone coming through in
negative words, accusations, and exaggerations will only undermine the validity of your complaint or claim.
Be precise in such details as names, dates and times, locations (addresses), and product names and numbers.
Wherever possible, provide and refer to evidence. For instance, you may include copies (definitely not
originals) of documentation such as receipts, invoices, work orders, bills of lading, emails (printed), phone
records, photographic evidence, and even video (e.g., of a damaged product).
3. Closing: No matter what prompted the complaint or claim, the closing must be politely worded with action
requests (e.g., a deadline) and goodwill statements. Nasty parting shots, even if merely passive-aggressive,
may lower your chances of getting what you’re asking for. By complimenting the recipient’s company
however, you up your chances of getting not only what you wanted, but perhaps a little extra. In damage-
control mode, the business wants you to feel compelled to tell your friends that the company really turned it
around.
TABLE 8.2.1: OUTLINE FOR COMPLAINTS OR CLAIMS
Outline Content Example Message

Subject Line 3- to 7-word title Refund for unwanted warranty purchase

1. Opening Main action request Greetings:

Please refund me for the $89.99 extended
warranty that was charged to my Visa despite
being declined at the point of sale.

2. Body Narrative of events This past Tuesday (June 12), I purchased an Acer
justifying the claim or laptop at the Belleville location of Future Shock
complaint Computers and was asked by the sales rep if I
would like to add a 3-year extended warranty to
the purchase. I declined and we proceeded with
the sale, which included some other accessories.
When I got home and reviewed the receipt (please
find the PDF scan attached), I noticed the
warranty that I had declined was added to the bill
after all.

3. Closing Deadlines and/or Please refund the cost of the warranty to the Visa
submission details account associated with the purchase by the end
of the week and let me know when you’ve done
so. I have enjoyed shopping at Future Shock for
the great prices and customer service. I would
sincerely like to return to purchase a printer soon.
Much appreciated!
Samantha
Notice that the final point in the closing suggests to the store manager that they have an opportunity to continue
the business relationship if all goes well with the correction. The implication is that a special deal on the printer
will smooth things over.
8.2.2: REPLYING TO COMPLAINTS OR CLAIMS
If a company grants what the complainant or claimant has asked for, communicating this is called
an adjustment message. An adjustment letter or email is heavy on courtesy in letting the disappointed customer
know that they are valued and will be (or have already been) awarded what they were asking for, and possibly
even a little extra. In the case of coupons for discounts on future purchases, the little extras help smooth things
over and win back the customer’s confidence, hopefully so they will tell their friends that the store or company
is worthy of their business after all.
[Link]: ADJUSTMENT MESSAGE ORGANIZATION
An adjustment message takes the direct approach by immediately delivering the good news about granting the
claimant’s request. Though you would probably start with an apology if this situation arose in person, starting
on a purely positive note is more effective in a written message. Tone is also important here; resist the urge to
shame the customer—even if they’re partly to blame or if part of you still suspects that the claim is fraudulent—
with begrudging, passive-aggressive shade. If you’re going to grant the claim, write it whole-heartedly as if
others will be able to see it and judge whether your company has good customer service or if you’re going to be
jerks about it.
Though a routine adjustment letter might skip a message body, a more serious one may need to go into more
detail about how you are complying with the request or take the time to explain what your company is doing to
prevent the error again. Doing this makes the reader feel as though making the effort to write will have made a
positive impact in the world, however small, because it will benefit not only you, but also everyone else who
won’t have to go through what you did. Even if you have to explain how the customer can avoid this situation in
the future (e.g., by using the product or service as it was intended), putting the responsibility partly on their
shoulders, do so in entirely positive terms (see §[Link].3 on using positive language and a list of negative
words to avoid). An apology might also be appropriate in the message body (see §[Link] below).
TABLE 8.2.2: OUTLINE FOR ADJUSTMENT MESSAGES REPLYING TO COMPLAINTS
AND CLAIMS
Outline Content Example Message

Subject Line Identify the previous Re: Refund for unwanted warranty purchase
subject line

1. Opening Main point about Hello, Samantha:

granting the request Absolutely, we would be happy to refund you for
the $90 warranty mistakenly charged along with
your purchase of the Acer laptop. For your
inconvenience, we will also offer you a $20 gift
card for future purchases at our store.

2. Body Details of compliance To receive your refund and gift card, please return
and/or assurances of to our Belleville location with your receipt and the
improved process credit card you purchased the computer with so
that we can credit the same card $90. (For
consumer protection reasons, we are unable to
complete any transactions without the card.)
We are sorry for inconveniencing you and will
speak with all sales staff about the importance of
carefully checking the accuracy of any bill of sale
before sending the order for payment. To ensure
that this doesn’t happen again, we will also
instruct sales staff to confirm with customers
whether an extended warranty appearing on the
sales bill is there with consent before completing
any transaction.

3. Closing Courteous statements We appreciate your choosing Future Shock for

expressing confidence your personal electronics and look forward to
in future business seeing you soon to credit your Visa card and
relations provide you with the best deal in town on the
printer you were looking to purchase.
Have a great day!
Melissa
Of course, not all complaints or claims deserve an adjustment, so we will examine how to write those
effectively in §8.3.2 below.
[Link]: APOLOGIZING
Apologizing is tricky because it is essential to winning back customer confidence in some situations, but also
leaves you or your company open to legal action in others. For minor matters, admitting fault with an apology
usually helps vindicate or validate the customer. In more serious matters, especially involving injury or damage
to property or even someone’s reputation (and thus their earning potential), a written apology might be read as
 admitting fault and be used as evidence in court. For this reason, it’s best to ask a manager or legal department
for guidance on apologizing to a customer or other stakeholder in writing.
If apologizing is appropriate because you genuinely erred, no legal repercussions are expected, and it’s the right
thing to do when trying to soothe an angry response and mend a damaged business relationship, ensure that the
apology has the following four characteristics:
 Sincere: Saying “We are genuinely sorry that you were disappointed with the customer service experience” is a
good first step, but requires some additional assurances to prove it.
 Responsible: Own the error by admitting fault (again, only if it doesn’t open you to litigation). Say what should
have happened versus what actually happened and acknowledge that you were wrong. When former Toronto
mayor Rob Ford apologized for his behaviour in November 2013, for instance, it sounded like this: “That was
pure stupidity. I shouldn’t have got hammered down at the Danforth. If you’re going to have a couple drinks
you stay home, and that’s it. You don’t make a public spectacle of yourself” (“Some memorable Rob Ford
quotes,” 2016).
 Specific: To be sincere, an apology must refer to a specific error by briefly describing it, possibly including
dates, locations (see the Ford example above), and the names of people responsible or affected, if appropriate.
The worst apologies are blanket, generic statements such as “We’re sorry if anyone was offended by our
actions.”
 Improvement-focused: An apology is useless unless it includes some assurances that the error won’t happen
again. Simply saying it won’t happen again isn’t as convincing as describing what will be done to ensure that it
won’t, as well as following through on it. When Starbucks apologized for a racist incident at one of its locations
in 2018, for instance, it followed through on a plan for improving customer service by shutting down all of its
stores for a half-day so that employees could receive racial sensitivity training (Dangerfield, 2018).
Apologizing may even be necessary when you’re not really in the wrong, but the customer’s or public’s
perception is that you are. In crisis communications (see §8.3.4 below), effective apologies show that you care
enough about your existing and potential clientele to say and do what it takes to win back their trust and
confidence in you. You can do this without falsely claiming that you made an error (if you genuinely didn’t) by
saying that you apologize for the misunderstanding. Dismissing complaints and doubling down on an error, on
the other hand, shows a brazen disrespect for the people your success depends on.

8.3: NEGATIVE MESSAGES

Just as in life, the workplace isn’t always a bowl of cherries. Sometimes things don’t go according to plan, and
it’s your job to communicate about them in a way that doesn’t ruin your relationships with customers,
coworkers, managers, the public, and other stakeholders. When doing damage control, bad-news messages
require care and skillful language because your main point will meet resistance. Rarely are people okay being
told that they’re laid off, their application has been rejected, their shipment got lost en route, prices or rates are
increasing, their appointment has to be moved back several months, or they’re losing their benefits. Though
some people prefer that the messenger be blunt about it, in most cases you can assume that the receiver will
appreciate or even benefit by a more tactful, indirect approach. Keep in mind the following advice whenever
required to deliver unwelcome news.
Negative Messages Topics
 8.3.1: The Seven Goals of Bad-news Messages
 8.3.2: Indirect Bad-news Message Organization
 8.3.3: Avoiding Disaster in Bad-news Messages
 8.3.4: Crisis Communications
 8.3.5: Direct Approach Bad-news Messages
8.3.1: THE SEVEN GOALS OF BAD-NEWS MESSAGES
Your ability to manage, clarify, and guide understanding is key to addressing challenging situations while
maintaining trust and integrity with customers, coworkers, managers, the public, and other stakeholders. Keep
in mind these seven goals when delivering bad news in person or in writing:
1. Be clear and concise to avoid being asked for additional clarification.
2. Help the receiver understand and accept the news.
3. Reduce the anxiety associated with the bad news as much as possible by expressing sympathy or empathy.
4. Maintain trust and respect between you and your audience to ensure the possibility of good future relations.
5. Deliver the bad news in a timely fashion in the appropriate channel(s).
6. Avoid the legal liability that comes with admitting negligence or guilt.
7. Achieve the designated business outcome.
Let’s look at how we can achieve these goals in examples of the tricky situations in which we might find
ourselves in the workplace.
Let’s say you are a supervisor and your manager has tasked you with getting Chris, an employee who is usually
late for work and has been arriving even later recently, to start arriving on time. Chris’s tardiness is impairing
not only his performance but also that of the entire team that depends on his work. You figure there are four
ways you can handle this:
1. Stop by Chris’s cubicle and simply say, “Get to work on time or you’re out”
2. Invite Chris out to a nice lunch and let him have it
3. Write Chris a stern email
4. Ask Chris to come to your office and discuss the behaviour with him in private
Let’s see how each of these alternatives meets our seven goals in delivering bad news.
First, if you approach Chris with a blunt ultimatum at his desk, you can get right to the point there but risk
straining the supervisor-employee relationship by putting him in his place in front of everyone. The aggressive
approach might prompt Chris to demand clarification, make defensive excuses, or throw hostile counter-
offensives right back—none of which are desired outcomes. For that matter, the disrespectful approach doesn’t
formally confirm that the tardiness will end. The lack of tact in the approach may reflect poorly on you as the
supervisor, not only with Chris but with your manager as well.
When you need to speak to an employee about a personnel concern, it is always best to do so in private. Give
thought and concern to the conversation before it occurs and make a list of points to cover with specific
information, including grievances. Like any other speech, you may need to rehearse, particularly if this type of
meeting is new to you. When it comes time to have the discussion, issue the warning, back it up in writing with
documentation, and don’t give the impression that you might change your decision. Whether the issue at hand is
a simple caution about tardiness or a more serious conversation, you need to be fair and respectful, even if the
other person has been less than professional. Let’s examine the next alternative.
Let’s say you invite Chris to lunch at a nice restaurant. He sees the fine linen on the table, silverware for more
than the main course, and water glasses with stems. The luxurious environment says “good job,” but your
serious talk will contradict this nonverbal signage, which will probably be an obstacle to Chris’s ability to
listen. If Chris doesn’t understand and accept the message, requiring him to seek clarification, your approach
has failed. Furthermore, the ambush fails to build trust, so you don’t know whether Chris is going to make the
extra effort to arrive early or just put in his time there doing the bare minimum while looking for another job.
Let’s say instead that you’ve written Chris a stern email. You’ve included a list of all the recent dates when he
was late and made several statements about the quality of his work. You clearly say he needs to improve and
stop being late, or else. But was your email harassment? Could it be considered beyond the scope of supervision
and interpreted as mean or cruel? And do you even know if Chris has received it? If there was no reply, do you
know whether it achieved its desired business outcome? A written message may certainly be part of the desired
approach, but how it is presented and delivered is as important as what it says. Let’s examine our fourth
approach to this scenario.
You ask Chris to join you in a private conversation. You start by expressing concern and asking an open-ended
question: “Chris, I’ve been concerned about your work lately. Is everything all right?” As Chris answers, you
may demonstrate that you are listening by nodding your head and possibly taking notes. You may learn that
Chris has been having problems sleeping or that his living situation has changed. Or Chris may decline to share
any issues, deny that anything is wrong, and ask why you are concerned. You may then state that you’ve
observed the chronic tardiness and name one or more specific mistakes you have found in Chris’s work, ending
by repeating your concern. Because showing your concern makes Chris feel valued, he opens up about his
situation so that you understand where he’s coming from. It may turn out that he has to drop his kids off for
school at 8am and then contend with Queensway traffic for the next hour to get to the office, consistently
 making him a half hour late. You can then both agree that he’ll stay a little later or put in the missing hours at
home, then write up that agreement in an email with your manager Cc’d.
Regardless of how well or poorly the conversation goes, if Chris tells other employees about it, they will take
note of how you handled the situation, and it will contribute to their perception of you. It guides their
expectations of how you operate and how to communicate with you as this interaction is not only about you and
Chris. You represent the company and its reputation, and your professional display of concern as you try to
learn more sends a positive message. While the private, respectful meeting may not be the perfect solution, it is
preferable to the other approaches considered above.
One additional point to consider as you document this interaction is the need to present the warning in writing.
You may elect to prepare a memo that outlines the information concerning Chris’s performance and tardiness
and have it ready should you want to present it. If the session goes well, and you have the discretion to make a
judgment call, you may elect to give him another week to resolve the issue. Even if it goes well, you may want
to present the memo, as it documents the interaction and serves as evidence of due process should Chris’s
behaviour fail to change, eventually resulting in the need for termination. This combined approach of a verbal
and written message is increasingly the norm in business communication (Business Communication for
Success, 2015, 17.1).

8.3.2: INDIRECT BAD-NEWS MESSAGE ORGANIZATION

Key to achieving Goal #2 of delivering bad news—i.e., helping the receiver understand and accept information
they don’t want to hear or read—is organizing the message using the indirect approach described
in §4.1.2 above. If you tactlessly hit your audience over the head with really bad news, you run the risk of them
rejecting or misunderstanding it because they may be reeling from the blow and be too distracted with anger or
sadness to rationally process the explanation or instructions for what to do about the bad news. A doctor never
delivers a really serious diagnosis by coming right out and saying “You have cancer!” first thing. Instead, they
try to put a positive spin on the results (“It could be worse”), discuss test results in detail, talk about treatment
options, and only then come around to telling the patient the bad news. At that point, being clear about the bad
news ensures that the receiver understands the gravity of the situation and is therefore motivated to follow
through on the therapeutic recommendations given earlier. Key to avoiding misunderstandings when delivering
bad news, then, is the following four-part organization:
1. Buffer
2. Justification
3. Bad news + redirection
4. Positive action closing
This is much like the three-part structure we’ve seen before in §4.1, only the body is now divided into two
distinct parts where the order really matters, as we see in Table 8.3.2 and the explanation for each part below it.
TABLE 8.3.2: BAD NEWS MESSAGE OUTLINE AND EXAMPLE MESSAGE
Part Example Message

1. Buffer Thank you for your order. We appreciate your interest in our product
and are confident you will love it.

2. Explanation We are writing to let you know that this product has been unexpectedly
popular with over 10,000 orders submitted on the day you placed yours.

3. Bad news + redirect This unexpected increase in demand has resulted in a temporary out-of-
stock/backorder situation. Despite a delay of 2-3 weeks, we will
definitely fulfill your order as it was received at 11:57pm on October 9,
2018, as well as gift you a $5 coupon towards your next purchase.

4. Positive action closing While you wait for your product to ship, we encourage you to use the
 enclosed $5 coupon toward the purchase of any product in our online
catalog. We appreciate your continued business and want you to know
that our highest priority is your satisfaction.

[Link]: BAD-NEWS MESSAGE BUFFER

Begin with neutral or positive statements that set a welcoming tone and serve as a buffer for the information to
come. A buffer softens the blow of bad news like the airbag in a car softens the driver’s collision with the
steering wheel in a high-speed car accident. If there are any silver linings that can calm the poor person about to
be pummeled by the dark thunder clouds of bad news, here at the beginning would be a good time to point them
out. The following are some possible buffer strategies:
 Good news: If there’s good news and bad news, start with the good news.
 Compliment: If you’re rejecting someone’s application, for instance, start by complimenting them on their
efforts and other specific accomplishments you were impressed by in their application.
 Gratitude: Say thanks for whatever positive things the recipient has done in your dealings with them. If they’ve
submitted a claim that doesn’t qualify for an adjustment, for instance, thank them for choosing your company.
 Agreement: Before delivering bad news that you’re sure the recipient is going to disagree with and oppose,
start with something you’re sure you both agree on. Start on common ground by saying, “We can all agree that .
. . .”
 Facts: If positives are hard to come by in a situation, getting started on the next section’s explanation, starting
with cold, hard facts, is the next best thing.
 Understanding: Again, if there are no silver linings to point to, showing you care by expressing sympathy and
understanding is a possible alternative (Guffey et al. 2016, p. 194)
 Apology: If you’re at fault for any aspect of a bad news message, an apology is appropriate as long as it won’t
leave you at a disadvantage in legal proceedings that may follow as a result of admitting wrongdoing.
(See §[Link] above for more on effective strategies for apologizing.)
The idea here is not to fool the audience into thinking that only good news is coming but to put them in a
receptive frame of mind for understanding the explanation that follows. If you raise the expectation that they’re
going to hear the good news that they’re getting what they want only, to let them down near the end, they’re
going to be even more disappointed for being led on. If you hit them over the head with bad news right away,
however, they may be more distracted with emotion to rationally process the explanation or instructions for
what to do about the bad news.
[Link]: BAD-NEWS JUSTIFICATION
The justification explains the background or context for the bad news before delivering the bad news itself.
Let’s say that you must reject an application, claim for a refund, or request for information. In such cases, the
explanation could describe the strict acceptance criteria and high quality of applications received in the
competition, the company policy on refunds, or its policy on allowable disclosures and the legalities of
contractually obligated confidentiality, respectively. Your goal with the explanation is to be convincing so that
the reader says, “That sounds reasonable” and similarly accepts the bad news as inevitable given the situation
you describe. On the other hand, if you make the bad news seem like mysterious and arbitrary decision-making,
your audience will probably feel like they’ve been treated unfairly and might even escalate further with legal
action or “yelptribution”—avenging the wrong in social media. While an explanation is ethically necessary,
never admit or imply responsibility without written authorization from your company cleared by legal counsel if
there’s any way that the justification might be seen as actionable (i.e., the offended party can sue for damages).
Use additional strategies to make the justification more agreeable such as focusing on benefits. If you’re
informing employees that they will have to pay double for parking passes next year in an attempt to reduce the
number of cars filling up the parking lot, you could sell them on the health benefits of cycling to work or the
environmental benefit of fewer cars polluting the atmosphere. If you’re informing a customer asking why a
product or service can’t include additional features, you could say that adding those features would drive the
cost up and you would rather respect your customer’s pocketbooks by keeping the product or service more
affordable. In any case, try to pitch an agreeable, pro-social or progressive benefit rather than saying that you’re
merely trying to maximize company or shareholder profits.
 [Link]: THE BAD NEWS ITSELF AND REDIRECTION
Burying the bad news itself in the message is a defining characteristic of the indirect approach. It’s akin to the
“poop sandwich” organization of constructive criticism sandwiched between statements of praise
(see §[Link] below). Far from intending to hide the bad news, the indirect approach frames the bad news so
that it can be properly understood and its negative (depressing or anger-arousing) impact minimized.
The goal is also to be clear in expressing the bad news so that it isn’t misunderstood while also being sensitive
to your reader’s feelings. If you’re rejecting a job applicant, for instance, you can be clear that they didn’t get
the job without bluntly saying “You failed to meet our criteria” or “You won’t be working for us anytime soon.”
Instead, you can clearly imply it by putting the bad news in a subordinate clause in the passive voice:
Though another candidate was hired for the position, . . .
The passive voice (see §4.3.4 above) enables you to draw attention away from your own role in rejecting the
applicant, as well as away from the rejected applicant in the context of the competition itself. Instead, you focus
on the positive of someone getting hired. While the rejected applicant probably won’t be throwing a celebration
party for the winning candidate, the subordinate clause here allows for speedy redirection to a consolation prize.
Redirection is key to this type of bad news’ effectiveness because it quickly shifts the reader’s attention to an
alternative to what they were seeking in the first place. Some kind of consolation prize (e.g., a coupon or store
credit) helps soothe the pain and will be appreciated as being better than nothing, at least. Even if you’re not
able to offer the reader anything of value, you could at least say something nice. In that case, completing the
sentence in the previous paragraph with an active-voice main clause could go as follows:
. . . we wish you success in your continued search for employment.
This way, you avoid saying anything negative while still clearly rejecting the applicant.
[Link]: POSITIVE ACTION CLOSING
As we’ve seen in previous explorations of message organization (e.g., §6.1.7 on email), the closing here
involves action information. If your redirection involves some alternative, such as a recommendation to apply
elsewhere, some follow-up details here would help the reader focus on the future elsewhere rather than getting
hung up on you and your company’s decision. Your goals here are the following
 Ensure that the reader understands the bad news without rehashing it
 Remain courteous, positive, and forward-looking
 End the conversation in such a way that you don’t invite further correspondence
The first and last goals are important because you don’t want the reader to respond asking you to clarify
anything. The second goal is important because you ultimately want to appear respectable and avoid giving the
reader a reason to smear your reputation in social media or proceed with legal action against you.

8.3.3: AVOIDING DISASTER IN BAD-NEWS MESSAGES

Delivering bad news can be dangerous if it angers the reader so much that they are motivated to fight back. If
you’re not careful with what you say, that message can be used as evidence in a court case that, when read by a
judge or jury, could compromise your position. You can lower the risk of being litigated against by following
the general principles given below when delivering bad news.
[Link]: AVOID NEGATIVE OR ABUSIVE LANGUAGE
Sarcasm, profanity, harsh accusations, and abusive or insulting language may feel good to write in a fit of anger
but, in the end, make everyone’s lives more difficult. When someone sends an inflammatory message and it’s
interpreted by the reader as harmful to their reputation, it could legally qualify as libel that is legitimately
actionable. Even if you write critically about a rival company’s product or service by stating (as if factually)
that it’s dangerous, whereas your version of the product or service is safer and better, this can be considered
defamation or libel. If said aloud and recorded, perhaps on a smart phone’s voice recorder, it is slander and can
likewise be litigated. It’s much better to always write courteously and maturely, even under difficult
circumstances, to avoid fallout that involves expensive court proceedings.
[Link]: AVOID OVERSHARING BUT TELL THE TRUTH
When your job is to provide a convincing rationale that might make the recipient of bad news accept it as
reasonable, be careful with what details you disclose. When rejecting a job applicant, for instance, you must be
especially careful not to lay all your cards on the table by sharing the scoring sheets of the winning and rejected
candidates, nor even summarize them. Though that would give them full picture, it would open you up to a
 flood of complaints and legal or human-rights challenges picking apart every little note. Instead, you would
simply wish the rejected candidate luck in their ongoing job search. When you must provide detail, avoid saying
anything bad about anyone so that you can’t be accused of libel and taken to court for it. Provide only as much
information as is necessary to provide a convincing rationale.
At the same, it’s important that you tell the truth so that you can’t be challenged on the details. If you are
inconsistent or contradictory in your explanation, it may invite scrutiny and accusations of lying. Even making
false claims by exaggerating may give the reader the wrong impression, which can lead to serious consequences
if acted upon. Though some might say that omitting the truth is a form of lying, telling the truth selectively is
the necessary compromise of a professional constrained by competing obligations to both the organization they
represent and the reader who they don’t want to anger or severely disappoint.
[Link]: RESPECT THE RECIPIENT’S PRIVACY
Criticizing an employee in a group email or memo—even if the criticism is fair—is mean, unprofessional, and
an excellent way of opening yourself to a world of trouble. People who call out others in front of a group create
a chilly climate in the workplace, one that leads to fear, loathing, and a loss of productivity among employees,
not to mention legal challenges for possible libel. Called-out employees may even resort to sabotaging the
office with misbehaviour such as vandalism, cyberattacks, or theft to get even. Always maintain respect and
privacy when communicating bad news as a matter of proper professionalism (Business Communication for
Success, 2015, 17.1).

8.3.4: CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS

A rumour that the CEO is ill pulls down the stock price. A plant explosion kills several workers and requires
evacuating residents in several surrounding city blocks. Risk management seeks to address such risks, including
prevention as well as liability, but emergency and crisis situations happen anyway. Employees also make errors
in judgment that can damage the public perception of a company. The mainstream media does not lack stories
involving infidelity, addiction, or abuse that require a clear response from a company’s standpoint. In this
chapter we address the basics of a crisis communication plan, focusing on key types of information during an
emergency:
 What is happening?
 Is anyone in danger?
 How big is the problem?
 Who reported the problem?
 Where is the problem?
 Has a response started?
 What resources are on-scene?
 Who is responding so far?
 Is everyone’s location known? (Mallet, Vaught, & Brinch, 1999)
You will be receiving information from the moment you know a crisis has occurred, but without a framework or
communication plan to guide you, valuable information may be ignored or lost. These questions help you
quickly focus on the basics of “who, what, and where” in the crisis situation.
A crisis communication plan is the prepared scenario document that organizes information into responsibilities
and lines of communication prior to an event. If an emergency arises when you already have a plan in place,
each person knows his or her role and responsibilities from a common reference document. Overall
effectiveness can be enhanced with a clear understanding of roles and responsibilities for an effective and swift
response. The plan should include four elements:
 Crisis communication team members with contact information
 Designated spokesperson
 Meeting place/location
 Media plan with procedures
A crisis communication team includes people who can decide what actions to take, carry out those actions, and
offer expertise or education in the relevant areas.
By designating a spokesperson prior to an actual emergency, your team addresses the inevitable need for
information in a proactive manner. People will want to know what happened and where to get further details
 about the crisis. Lack of information breeds rumours that can make a bad situation worse. The designated
spokesperson should be knowledgeable about the organization and its values; be comfortable in front of a
microphone, camera, and media lights; and be able to stay calm under pressure.
Part of your communication crisis plan should focus on where you will meet to coordinate communicate and
activities. In case of a fire in your house, you might meet in the front yard. In an organization, a designated
contingency building or office some distance away from your usual place of business might serve as a central
place for communication in an emergency that requires evacuating your building. Depending on the size of your
organization and its facilities, the emergency plan may include exit routes, hazardous materials procedures
(WHMIS), and policies for handling bomb threats, for example. Safety is of course the priority, but in terms of
communication, the goal is to eliminate confusion about where people are, where they need to be, and where
information is coming from.
Whether or not evacuation is necessary when a crisis occurs, your designated spokesperson will gather
information and carry out your media plan. They will need to make quick judgments about which information to
share, how to phrase it, and whether certain individuals need to be notified of facts before they become public.
The media and public will want to get reliable information, which is preferable to mere spin or speculation.
Official responses help clarify the situation for the public, but an unofficial interview can make the tragedy
personal and attract unwanted attention. Remind employees to direct all inquiries to the official spokesperson
and to never speak anonymously or “off the record.”
Enable your spokesperson to have access to the place you indicated as your crisis contingency location to
coordinate communication and activities, and allow them to prepare and respond to inquiries. When crisis
communication is handled in a professional manner, it seeks not to withhold information or mislead, but to
minimize the “spin damage” from the incident by providing necessary facts even if they are unpleasant or even
tragic
8.3.5: DIRECT-APPROACH BAD-NEWS MESSAGES
We’ve so far looked at expressing bad news using the indirect approach, but is it ever right to deliver bad news
using the direct approach? Are there occasions where you can or should be upfront about the bad news? In the
following situations, yes, it’s certainly appropriate to deliver bad news by getting right to the point:
 When the bad news isn’t that bad:
o In the case of small price or rate increases, customers won’t be devastated by having to pay more. Indeed,
inflation makes such increases an expected fact of life.
o If your job involves routinely delivering criticism because you’re a Quality Assurance specialist, the people
who are used to receiving recommendations to improve their work will appreciate the direct approach. Some
organizations even require direct-approach communications for bad news as a policy because it is more time-
efficient.
 When you know that the recipient prefers or requires the direct approach: Though the indirect approach is
intended as a nice way to deliver bad news, some people would rather you be blunt. “Give it to me straight, doc.
I’m a grown-up. I can take it,” they might say. Since a message must always be tailored to the audience, getting
permission for taking the direct approach is your cue to follow through with exactly that. Not doing so will
arouse the angry response you would have expected otherwise.
 When you’re short on time or space: One of the hallmarks of the indirect approach is that it takes more words
than a direct-approach message (see Table 6.1.5 for comparative examples). If time is limited or you’re
constrained in how much space you have to write, taking the direct approach is justifiable.
 When the indirect approach hasn’t worked: If this is the third time you’ve had to tell a client to pay their
invoice and the first two were nicely-worded indirect messages that the recipient ignored, take the kid-gloves
off and issue a stern warning of the consequences of not paying. You may need to threaten legal action or say
you’ll refer the account to a collection agency, and you may need to put it in bold so that you’re sure the reader
won’t miss it.
 When the reader may miss the bad news: You may determine from profiling your audience and their literacy
level that they might not understand indirect-approach bad news (see Step 1.2 in the writing process in §2.2 on
analyzing the audience). If your reader doesn’t have a strong command of English vocabulary and misses words
here and there, they may not pick up on the buried bad news past the mid-point of a challenging message.
 In the above situations, structure your message following the same three-part organization we’ve seen
elsewhere (e.g., §6.1.5 – §6.1.7 on email parts):
1. Opening: State the bad news right up front.
2. Body: Briefly explain why the bad news happened.
3. Closing: Express confidence in continued business relations with a goodwill statement and provide any
action information such as contact instructions should the recipient require further information.
Of course, clarity and brevity in such messages is vital to maintaining friendly relations with your audiences
(Guffey et al., 2016, p. 190).

8.4: PERSUASIVE MESSAGES

Persuasion involves moving or motivating your audience by presenting arguments that convince them to adopt
your view or do as you want. You’ve been doing this ever since you learned to speak. From convincing your
parents to give you a treat to persuading them to lend you the car keys, you’ve developed more sophisticated
means of persuasion over the years simply because of the rewards that come with their success. Now that
you’ve entered (or will soon enter) the professional world, honing persuasive strategies for the workplace is
vital to your livelihood when the reward is a sale, a promotion, or merely a regular paycheque.
Persuasion begins with motivation. If persuasion is a process and your audience’s action (e.g., buying a product
or service) is the goal, then motivating them to accept an argument or a series of positions leading to the
decision that you want them to adopt helps achieve that goal. If your goal is to convince a pet owner to spay or
neuter their pet, for instance, you would use a few convincing arguments compelling them to accept that
spaying or neutering is the right thing to do.
Persuasive Messages Topics
 8.4.1: The Rhetorical Triangle
 8.4.2: Principles of Persuasion
 8.4.3: Indirect AIDA Pattern of Persuasion
8.4.1: THE RHETORICAL TRIANGLE
Use the rhetorical triangle by combining logic, emotional appeal, and authority (a.k.a. logos, pathos,
and ethos in classical Aristotelian rhetoric) to cater your message to your audience. You could appeal to their
sense of reason by explaining the logical consequences of not spaying or neutering their pet: increasing the local
cat or dog population, or even producing a litter that you yourself have to deal with, including all the care and
expenses related to it. You might appeal to their emotions by saying that the litters resulting from your pet’s
mating with strays will suffer starvation and disease in their short lives. You could establish your credibility by
explaining that you’ve earned a diploma in the Vet Tech program at Algonquin College and have eight years’
experience seeing the positive results that spaying or neutering has on local dog or cat populations, making you
a trustworthy authority on the topic. All of these moves help overcome your audience’s resistance and convince
them to follow your advice\. These three appeals can also complement other effective techniques in persuading
an audience as we shall see throughout this section.
8.4.2: PRINCIPLES OF PERSUASION
What’s the best way to succeed in persuading people to buy what you’re selling? Though there may sometimes
be a single magic bullet, a combination of strategies has been found to be most effective. Social psychologist
Robert Cialdini offers us six principles of persuasion that are powerful and effective no matter what the cultural
context. Use them to help persuade people, but also recognize their use by others when determining how you’re
being led towards a purchase, perhaps even one you should rightly resist.
 [Link]: Reciprocity
 [Link]: Scarcity
 [Link]: Authority
 [Link]: Commitment and consistency
 [Link]: Consensus
 [Link]: Liking
[Link]: PRINCIPLE OF RECIPROCITY
I scratch your back; you scratch mine. Reciprocity means that when you give something to somebody, they feel
obligated to give something back to you in return, even if only by saying “thank you.” If you are in customer
service and go out of your way to meet the customer’s need, you are appealing to the principle of reciprocity
with the knowledge that all but the most selfish among us perceive the need to reciprocate—in this case, by
increasing the likelihood of making a purchase from you because you were especially helpful. Reciprocity
builds trust and a relationship develops, reinforcing everything from personal to brand loyalty. By taking the
lead and giving, you build in a moment a sense of obligation motivating the receiver to follow social norms and
customs by giving back.
[Link]: PRINCIPLE OF SCARCITY
It’s universal to want what you can’t have. People are naturally attracted to the rare and exclusive. If they are
convinced that they need to act now or it will disappear, they are motivated to act. Scarcity is the perception of
dwindling supply of a limited and valuable product. For a sales representative, scarcity may be a key selling
point—the particular car, theater tickets, or pair of shoes you are considering may be sold to someone else if
you delay making a decision. By reminding customers not only of what they stand to gain but also of what they
stand to lose, the sales rep increases their chances of swaying the customer from contemplation to action, which
is to close the sale.
[Link]: PRINCIPLE OF AUTHORITY
Notice how saying “According to researchers, . . .” makes whatever you say after these three words sound more
true than if you began with “I think that . . . .” This is because you’re drawing on authority to build trust (recall
the concept of ethos from the “rhetorical triangle” in §8.4.1 above), which is central to any purchase decision.
Who does a customer turn to? A salesperson may be part of the process, but an endorsement by an authority
holds credibility that no one with a vested interest can ever attain. Knowledge of a product, field, trends in the
field, and even research can make a salesperson more effective by the appeal to the principle of authority. It
may seem like extra work to educate your customers, but you need to reveal your expertise to gain credibility.
We can borrow a measure of credibility by relating what experts have indicated about a product, service,
market, or trend, and our awareness of competing viewpoints allows us insight that is valuable to the customer.
Reading the manual of a product is not sufficient to gain expertise—you have to do extra homework. The
principle of authority involves referencing experts and expertise.
[Link]: PRINCIPLE OF COMMITMENT AND CONSISTENCY
When you commit to something, you feel obligated to follow through on it. For instance, if you announce on
social media that you’re going to do yoga every day for a month, you feel greater pressure to actually do so than
if you resolved to do it without telling anyone. This is because written words hold a special power over us when
it feels as though their mere existence makes what we’re doing “official.” If we were on the fence, seeing it now
in writing motivates us to act on it and thereby honour our word by going through with the purchase. In sales,
this could involve getting a customer to sign up for a store credit card or a rewards program.
[Link]: PRINCIPLE OF CONSENSUS
If you make purchase decisions based on what you see in online reviews, you’re proving how effective the
principle of consensus can be. People trust first-person testimonials when making purchase decisions, especially
if there are many of them and they’re unanimous in their endorsement. The herd mentality is a powerful force
across humanity. If “everybody else” thinks this product is great, then it must be great. Such argumentum ad
populum (Latin for “argument to the people”) is a logical fallacy because there’s no guarantee that something is
true if the majority believe it. We are genetically programmed to trust our tribe in the absence more credible
information, however, because it makes decision-making easier in the fight for survival.
[Link]: PRINCIPLE OF LIKING
We are more likely to buy something from someone we like, who likes us, who is attractive, and who we can
identify with because we see enough points of similarity between ourselves. These perceptions offer a sense of
safe belonging. If a salesperson says they’re going to cut you a deal because they like you, your response is to
reciprocate that acceptance by going through with the deal. If you find them easy to look at—no matter which
sex—you are predisposed to like them because, from an evolutionary standpoint, attractiveness suggests genetic
superiority and hence authority. Furthermore, if the salesperson makes themselves relatable by saying that they
had the same problem as you and this is what they did about it, you’re more likely to follow their advice
 because that bond produces the following argument in your mind: “This person and I are similar in that we
share a common problem, they solved it expertly by doing X, and I can therefore solve the same problem in my
life by doing X”

8.4.3: INDIRECT AIDA PATTERN OF PERSUASION

When you consider the tens or hundreds of thousands of TV commercials you’ve seen in your life, you
understand how they all take the indirect approach (typically associated with delivering bad news, as we saw
in §4.1.2 and §8.3 above) because they assume you will resist parting with your money. Instead of taking a
direct approach by simply saying in seven seconds “Come to our store, give us $100, and we’ll give you these
awesome sunglasses,” commercials use a variety of techniques to motivate you to ease your grip on your
money. They will dramatize a problem-solution scenario, use celebrity endorsements, humour, special effects,
jingles, intrigue, and so on. You’re well familiar with the pattern from having seen and absorbed it many times
each day of your life, but when you must make a persuasive pitch yourself as part of your professional duties,
you may need a little guidance with the typical four-part indirect pattern known as “AIDA”:
 [Link]: A – Attention-getting Opening
 [Link]: I – Interest-building Body
 [Link]: D – Desire-building Details and Overcoming Resistance
 [Link]: A – Action-motivating Closing
[Link]: A – ATTENTION-GETTING OPENING
When your product, service, or initiative is unknown to the reader, come out swinging to get their attention with
a surprise opening. Your goal is to make it inviting enough for the reader to want to stay and read the whole
message. The opening can only do that if it uses an original approach that connects the reader to the product,
service, or initiative with its central selling feature. This feature is what distinguishes it from others of its kind;
it could be a new model of (or feature on) a familiar product, a reduced price, a new technology altogether, etc.
A tired, old opening sales pitch that appears to be aimed at a totally different demographic with a product that
doesn’t seem to be any different from others of its kind, however, will lose the reader at the opening pitch. One
that uses one of the following techniques, however, stands a good chance of hooking the reader in to stick
around and see if the pitch offers an attractive solution to one of their problems:
 Focus on the solution’s benefits:
o Imagine cooling down from your half-hour sunbath on the white-sand beach with a dip in turquoise Caribbean
waters. This will be you if you book a Caribbean Sun resort vacation package today!
o What if I told you that you could increase your sales by 25% in the next quarter by using an integrated
approach to social media?
o Consider a typical day in the life of a FitBit user: . . .
 Focus on the problem scenario:
o Is your hard-earned money just sitting in a chequing account losing value from inflation year after year?
o Have you ever thought about investing your money but have no idea where to start?
 Surprising quotation, fact, or statistic:
o Yogi Berra once said, “If you come to a fork in the road, take it!” At Epic Adventures, any one of our Rocky
Mountain hiking experiences will elevate you to the highest of your personal highs.
o The shark is the ocean’s top predator. When you’re looking to invest your hard-earned money, why would you
want to swim with sharks? Go to a trusted broker at Lighthouse Financial.
o Look around the room. One in five of you will die of heart disease. Every five minutes, a Canadian aged 20 or
over dies from heart disease, the second leading cause of death in the country. At the Fitness Stop, keep your
heart strong with your choice of 20 different cardio machines and a variety of aerobics programs designed to
work with your busy schedule.
The goal here is to get the reader thinking, “Oooh, I want that” or “I need that” without giving them an
opportunity to doubt whether they really do. Of course, the attention-gaining opening is unnecessary if the
reader already knows something about the product or service. If the customer comes to you asking for further
details, you would just skip to the I-, D-, or A-part of the pitch that answers their questions.
[Link]: I – INTEREST-BUILDING BODY
Once you’ve got the reader’s attention in the opening, your job is now to build on that by extending the interest-
building pitch further. If your opening was too busy painting a solution-oriented picture of the product to
mention the company name or stress a central selling feature, now is the time to reveal both in a cohesive way.
If the opening goes “What weighs nothing but is the most valuable commodity in your lives? —Time,” a
cohesive bridge to the interest-building bod of the message could be “At Synaptic Communications, we will
save you time by . . . .” Though you might want to save detailed product description for the next part, some
description might be necessary here as you focus on how the product or service will solve the customer’s
problem.
Key to making this part effective is describing how the customer will use or benefit from the product or service,
placing them in the centre of the action with the “you” view (see §[Link].1 above):
When you log into your WebCrew account for the first time, an interactive AI guide will greet and guide you
through the design options for your website step by step. You will be amazed by how easy it is to build your
website from the ground up merely by answering simple multiple-choice questions about what you want and
selecting from design options tailored to meet your individual needs. Your AI guide will automatically shortlist
stock photo options and prepare text you can plug into your site without having to worry about permissions.
Here, the words you or your appear 11 times in 3 sentences while still sounding natural rather than like a high-
pressure sales tactic.
[Link]: D – DESIRE-BUILDING DETAILS AND OVERCOMING RESISTANCE
Now that you’ve hooked the reader in and hyped-up your product, service, or idea with a central selling feature,
you can flesh out the product description with additional evidence supporting your previous claims. Science and
the rational appeal of hard facts work well here, but the evidence must be appropriate. A pitch for a sensible car,
for instance, will focus on fuel efficiency with litres per 100km or range in number of kilometres per battery
charge in the case of an electric vehicle, not top speed or the time it takes to get from 0 to 100 km/h. Space
permitting, you might want to focus on only two or three additional selling features since this is still a pitch
rather than a product specifications (“specs”) sheet, though you can also use this space to point the reader to
such details in an accompanying document or webpage.
Testimonials and guarantees are effective desire-building contributions as long as they’re believable. If
someone else much like you endorses a product in an online review, you’ll be more likely to feel that you too
will benefit from it (see §[Link] above on the principle of consensus). A guarantee will also make the reader
feel as though they have nothing to lose if they can just return the product or cancel a service and get their
money back if they don’t like it after all. Costco has been remarkably successful as a wholesaler appealing to
individual grocery shoppers partly on the strength of a really generous return policy.
Rhetorically, this point in the pitch also provides an opportunity to raise and defeat objections you anticipate the
reader having towards your product, service, or idea. This follows a technique called refutation, which comes
just before the conclusion (“peroration”) in the six-part classical argument structure. It works to dispel any
lingering doubt in the reader’s mind about the product as pitched to that point.
If the product is a herbicide being recommended as part of a lawncare strategy, for instance, the customer may
have reservations about spreading harmful chemicals around their yard. A refutation that assures them that the
product isn’t harmful to humans will help here, especially if it’s from a trusted source such as Canada Health
or Consumer Reports. Other effective tricks in the vein of emotional appeal (complementing the evidence-based
rational appeal that preceded it) include picturing a worst-case scenario resulting from not using the product.
Against concerns about using a herbicide, a pitch could use scare-tactics such as talking about the spread of
wild parsnip that can cause severe burns upon contact with skin and blindness if the sap gets in your eyes. By
steering the customer to picturing their hapless kids running naïvely through the weeds in their backyard, crying
in pain, rubbing their eyes, and going blind, you can undermine any lingering reservations a parent may have
about using the herbicide.
[Link]: A – ACTION-MOTIVATING CLOSING
The main point of your message directs the reader to act (e.g., buy your product or service), so its appearance at
the end of the message—rather than at the beginning—is what makes an AIDA pitch indirect. If the AID-part of
your pitch has the reader feeling that they have no choice but to buy the product or service, then this is the right
time to tell them how and where to get it, as well as the price.
 Pricing itself requires some strategy. The following are well-known techniques for increasing sales:
 Charm pricing: dropping a round number by a cent to make it end in a 99 because the casually browsing
consumer brain’s left-digit bias will register a price of $29.99 as closer to $20 than $30, especially if the 99 is
physically smaller in superscript ($2999).
 Prestige pricing: keeping a round number round and dropping the dollar sign for a luxury item. For instance,
placing the number 70 beside a dinner option on a fancy restaurant’s menu makes it look like a higher-quality
dish than if it were priced at $6999. To impress a date with your spending power, you’ll go for the 70 option
over something with charm pricing.
 Anchoring: making a price look more attractive by leading with a higher reference price. For instance, if you
want to sell a well-priced item, you would strategically place a more expensive model next to it so that the
consumer has a sense of the price range they’re dealing with when they don’t otherwise know. They’ll feel like
they’re getting more of a bargain with the well-priced model. Similarly, showing the regular price crossed out
near the marked-down price on the price tag is really successful in increasing sales (Boachie, 2016).
If the product or service is subscription-based or relatively expensive, breaking it down to a monthly, weekly, or
even daily price installment works to make it seem more manageable than giving the entire sum. Equating it to
another small daily purchase also works. The cost of sponsoring a child in a drought-stricken nation sounds
better when it’s equated with the cost of a cup of coffee per day. A car that’s a hundred dollars per week in lease
payments sounds more doable than the entire cost, especially if you don’t have $45,000 to drop right now but
are convinced that you must have that car anyway. Framing the price in terms of how much the customer will
save is also effective, as is brushing over it in a subordinate clause to repeat the central selling point:
For only §49.99 per month, you can go about your business all day and sleep easy at night knowing your home
is safe with Consumer Reports’ top-rated home security system.
Action directions must be easy to follow to clinch customer buy-in. Customers are in familiar territory if they
merely have to go to a retail location, pick the unit up off the shelf, and run it through the checkout. Online
ordering and delivery is even easier. Vague directions (“See you soon!”) or a convoluted, multi-step registration
and ordering process, however, will frustrate and scare the customer away. Rewards for quick action are
effective (see §[Link] above on the principle of scarcity), such as saying that the deal holds only while supplies
last or the promo code will expire at the end of the day.
Sales pitches are effective only if they’re credible (see §[Link] above on the principle of authority). Even one
exaggerated claim can sink the entire message with the sense that it’s all just snake-oil smoke and mirrors.
Saying that your product is the best in the world, but not backing this up with any third-party endorsement or
sales figures proving the claim, will undermine every other credible point you make by making your reader
doubt it all (Lehman, DuFrene, & Murphy, 2013, pp. 134-143). We’ll return to topic of avoidable unethical
persuasive techniques in §10.2.4 below, but first let’s turn our attention in the next section to a more uplifting
type of message.

Features of an effective business E-mail.

Features of Email – Electronic :
It is an electronic mode of message transmission as it is sent using HTML (Hyper Text MarkupLanguage) – The
computer code used to create web pages. –
Cost-Effective :
It is one of the cost-effective modes of fast communication. Today with the advent of smart-phones,
communicating through emails has become even more cost-effective. –
Packages :
Packages like ‘Messenger’ and ‘Outlook’ help us compose new mails or forward the received ones to one or all
of the people whose email addresses are stored in the ‘Address Box’. They allow us to change font, sizes and
colour of the text; highlight, delete, store or save; align, center or justify the text; italicize, bold, underline or
even print what we write or receive as email. –
Interface:
An interface between email programme and word processing programme allows us to cut, copy and paste
material from one place to the other.
 Attachments :
The ‘Attach’ option allows us to share documents, worksheets, presentations, pictures and videos along with the
mails. –
Spam :
Unsolicited or Junk mails can be filtered by using the ‘spam’ option which forbids unwanted mails to enter your
inbox. These unwanted mails may be advertisements, job offers, competition forms, etc. which one does not
want to receive frequently. –
Signature :
We can customize our signature as we want it to appear in the complimentary closure of every email. Once you
add your signature it automatically appears at the end of every mail that you compose. One need not write the
name, designation, contact no, etc. again and again. –
Search :
The search option helps us to locate old email communications. This can be achieved by typing the sender’s
name in the search box and clicking the search button. It will reflect all mails containing the name so typed. –
Cloud Storage :
A more recent feature is cloud storage. Data can be stored on cloud. This facilitates access and instant updates
to multiple users. Google Drive, Dropboxetc are examples companies offering cloud service solutions to
enterprises. –
Changes at the Workplace :
This trend of online work has brought about other changes like virtual workplaces, work from home, flexi-time
etc.

Features of an Email Accounts

An email account, in general has the following folders:
Inbox:
Inbox is the main folder in your email account. It contains all the e-mails that have arrived in your e-mail
account. You can click on inbox to see the mails that you have not read (shown in bold) as well as the mails that
you have already read (in normal font).

Sent Mail :
It shows all the e-mails sent by you from your e-mail account.

Drafts :
This folder stores those messages that you have created but have not been sent by you so far. These messages
are saved by you for more work.

Spam :
Spam is unsolicited e-mails or junk mails. It is generally e-mail advertising sent to group of people. We can also
term spam as unwanted e-mails. Spam mails are also a big cause of computer viruses. Spam mails are identified
by the mail services and placed in this folder. These spam mails are automatically deleted after few days.

Trash :
Any deleted mail is put in the Trash folder. Trash folder allows you to get back an e-mail which have already
been deleted. But it is important to know that you can get back the mails only within few days from trash after
its deletion. After few days, mails are permanently deleted from trash folder.

An email account, in general has the following options:

Compose Mail :
Composing is addressing, writing, and sending an e-mail message. By clicking on the Compose Mail button a
window appears where we can write our message in the message box and the email addresses of the person we
want to send the mail.
Contacts :
The Contacts helps you to find email address of a person whom you have saved in your Contact list. We can
also quickly find email conversations associated with a contact, and store additional information about our other
persons whose email id is stored in our contacts (such as a mailing address, title, phone number, etc). To field -
you have to put the address of the receiver. In case you want to send email to more than one receiver then put
commas between their email addresses or you can use ?add cc. or ?add bcc. Cc stands for Carbon copy the
persons whose address is listed in this field will receive carbon copy of the message and Bcc means blind
carbon copy similar to Cc but only difference is that the recipient who had got Bcc is invisible to other
recipients.

Subject :
The main heading of your mail i.e., it will explain that the mail is regarding which issue. Please note that the
subject should be descriptive of the mail to help the receiver understand what mail is about without having to
open the mail.

Text Area :
The message is written in this area.

Send :
you can send the mail by clicking the Send button. Group Contacts is one such list as explain earlier. Contacts
can be organized in different groups like office, school, relatives etc.

Optimizing Personal Email Use

Experts in the fields of business and electronic communication agree that managers and small business owners
can take several steps to maximize the efficiency of their company’s e-mail systems. These tips extend from
patterns of personal e-mail use to guidelines for companywide e-mail policies. Professional appearance and
content are paramount in an e-mail. Some basic guidelines and action points to be followed are:

– The standards of professionalism that dictate postal correspondence stay –Proper Grammar, correct spelling,
tone, courtesy, structure, content etc.
– Avoid ‘Emoticons” – smileys, winks etc in official correspondence.
– Maintain separate accounts for official and personal e-mails. Many organizations have firewalls against
personal mails like Yahoo, Gmail etc.
– Avoid ‘spamming.’ Maintain a proper distribution list of recipients for your mails.
– Limit the size of attachments to be received or sent out by e-mail. Organizations have policies and limits for
the size of attachments. This helps monitor data security, virus attacks etc.
– Have a standard signature for your official e-mails – Name, Designation, Phone numbers. This helps in
accurate identification.
– Respond promptly to official e-mail messages – less than 24 hours. In case the response takes more detailed
information, write a short reply explaining how long it would take for you to give a proper response. Non-
response sends out wrong signals.
– Set up efficient daily e-mail practices. Today, e-mails are configured on the smart phones, further reducing the
expected response time.
– Delete old messages that can clutter up your inbox. Ensure that your inbox is not cluttered and allows for
incoming messages without delay.
– Review incoming e-mails only at two or three set times a day, rather than peeking at each one as it comes in;
and
– Invest in supplementary tools that can block e-mail spam that clogs many systems.
– Use the “Reply/Reply All” features with care. Your response may be intended only for the sender and not to
all included in the mail.
Email Etiquette
While a lot of people understand the importance of following certain rules when writing a business letter, they
often forget these rules when composing an email message. Here’s a refresher.

– Mind Your Manners : Think of the basic rules you learned growing up, like saying please and thank you.
– Address people you don’t know as Mr., Mrs., or Dr. address someone by first name only if they imply it’s
okay with them to do so.
– Watch Your Tone : Merriam-Webster defines tone as an “accent or inflection expressive of a mood or
emotion.” It is very difficult to express tone in writing, but make sure that you should come across as respectful,
friendly, and approachable. You should not sound curt or demanding.
– Be Concise : Get to the point of your email as quickly as possible, but don’t leave out important details that
will help your recipient answer your query.
– Be Professional : This means, stay away from abbreviations and don’t use emoticons (those little smiley
faces). Don’t use a suggestive email address for business communications.
– Use Correct Spelling and Proper Grammar : Use a dictionary or a spell checker whichever works better for
you. While you can write in a conversational tone (contractions are okay), pay attention to basic rules of
grammar.
– Wait to Fill in the “TO” Email Address: Career Planning Site visitor Larry Batchelor says, “I never fill in the
‘TO’ email address until I am completely through proofing my email and I am sure that it is exactly the way
that I want it. This will keep you from accidentally sending an email prematurely. In the past, I have
accidentally clicked on the send icon, when I really meant to click on the attachment icon.”

Advantages and disadvantages of Email

Email has changed the way we do business. Sure, people complain about the amount of Email they receive. But
when all is said and done, use of Email has made a positive impact on business and has an edge over other
methods of communication.

Here are five advantages of using Email:

(i) Managing Email is Easy : You can manage all your correspondence on screen and so can your customers.
Your proposal can be answered, revised, stored, and sent to others, all without reams of paper involved.
(ii) Email is Fast : Mail is delivered instantly from your office to anywhere in the world. No other method of
delivery can provide this service. Timely buying and selling decisions can be made in one heartbeat.
(iii) Email is Inexpensive : Compared to telephone calls, faxes, or over night courier service, Email is less
expensive.
(iv) Email is Easy to Filter : The subject line on an Email makes it easy to prioritize messages. The reader can
identify critical correspondence quickly and deal with it immediately. Unlike regular mail which needs to be
opened and reviewed, or voice mail which requires you to either listen to or scan all your messages for those
that require immediate attention.
(iv) Transmission is Secure and Reliable : The level of security in transmitting Email messages is very high, and
the industry continues to strive to develop even tighter security levels. Email is private. Often telephone and fax
messages are not. If the address information is correct, rarely does an Email go astray. Fax machines can be out
of order or out of paper and this prevents an important message from being delivered in a timely manner.

Disadvantage of using E-mail

(i) Time Consuming :
Writing an email takes less time than it takes to print a letter and mail it off the ease with which an e-mail is
send implies that an average person may do more correspondence electronically than he would if all
correspondence was done by postal mail. Sometimes the message is better communicated over the telephone or
directly. Organizing and reading through emails can also eat up a great deal of time and prove an obstacle in the
way of a worker’s producitivity.
(ii) Security :
Sensitive information can be easily shared and distributed within a business through email. It does not matter if
the email is sent accidentally or deliberately, the damage reamins the same. Moreover, when someone hands
you a business letter, you are the only person who receives that letter. An e mail can be intercepted by a hacker
or go on an incorrect email address and wind up in someone else’s inbox. Your sensitive information and
messages are easily accessible to hackers and to even unsuspecting recipients.
(iii) Impersonal Communication :
While email can be faster, the meaning of the message is often lost in the text. It can make customers or
employees forget there are people involved in the transaction, which can affect customer service. Since email
recipients cannot see one another, the emails do not have any voice inflection or emotion that can help in proper
interpretation.
(iv) Misunderstanding :
Pronouns and popular jargon can lead to conflicts in emails. In addition, email is filled with abbreviations and
short descriptions, which can often be misunderstood and/or interpreted the wrong way.
(v) Vulnerability :
It would take a manual effort on the part of someone to access all his important printed documents and destroy
them. But all of your emails and important information can be lost with a simple hard-drive crash. Even if you
store your email information on another server, you could lose your data if that site goes down or gets out of
business.
(vi) Whether an organisation depends on internet connectivity:
E-mail depends on the internet connectivity which can get disturbed or disconnected due to various reasons.
– Email cannot be considered a confidential mode of communication.
– Email should not be considered as a replacement for direct, face-to-face communication.
– Email cannot be relied in case of emergency messages as the receiver may read it at his own convenient time.
– Email depends on the internet connectivity which can get disturbed or disconnected due to various reasons.
– Workforce Productivity :
Intranets can help users to locate and view information faster and use applications relevant to their roles and
responsibilities.
– Time :
Intranets allow organizations to distribute information to employees on an as-needed basis. Employees may link
to relevant information at their convenience, rather than being distracted indiscriminately by electronic mail.
– Communication :
Intranets can serve as a powerful tool of communication within an organization, vertically as well as
horizontally. From the communication standpoint, intranets are useful to communicate strategic initiatives that
have a global reach throughout the organization. By providing this information on the intranet, staff has the
opportunity to keep up-to-date with the strategic focus of the organization. Some examples of communication
are chat, email, and blogs.
– Web Publishing :
It allows cumbersome corporate knowledge to be maintained and easily accessed throughout the company using
hypermedia and Web technologies. Examples include: employee manuals, benefits documents, company
policies, business standards, news feeds, and even training can be accessed using common Internet standards
(Acrobat files, Flash files, CGI applications). Because each business unit can update the online copy of a
document, the most recent version usually becomes available to the employees using the intranet.
– Business Operations and Management :
Intranets are also being used as a platform for developing and deploying applications to support business
operations and decisions across the internetworked enterprise.
– Cost-effective :
Users can view information and data via web-browser rather than maintaining physical documents, such as
procedure manuals, internal phone list and requisition forms. This can potentially save the business money on
printing, duplicating documents, and the environment as well as document maintenance overhead. For example,
people using internet services “derived significant cost savings by shifting HR processes to the intranet”.
– Enhance Collaboration :
Information is easily accessible by all authorized users, which enables teamwork.
– Promote Common Corporate Culture :
Every user has the ability to view the same information within the Intranet.
– Immediate Updates :
When dealing with the public in any capacity, laws, specifications, and parameters can change. Intranets make it
possible to provide your audience with “live” changes so they are kept upto-date, which can limit a company’s
liability.
– Supports a Distributed Computing Architecture :
The intranet can also be linked to a company’s management information system, for example a time keeping
system.