Evan Thomas

Your course textbooks, Timothy Flood’s MBA Fundamentals: Business Writing and Edmond Weiss’s The Elements of International English Style, begin with a summary of essential factors that make writing successful or not. Flood and Weiss provide tools and strategies that you can apply immediately.

-Read Flood, Chapters 1, 3, and 6 addressing learning business writing basics which are provided just in this unit so you have time to obtain the rest of the eBook.

-Read Weiss, Chapter 1 that reviews the language of global business.

Although persuasive memos can use emotional appeals to persuade an audience, in business culture, the persuasion is usually objective and based on reasoning and logic. Therefore, you will want to persuade your audience using facts and sound reasoning. If the memo is persuasive, it will incite the reader to change their views, act in your behalf, or act in behalf of your argument or idea.

Reading:

In preparation for the two Discussion topics:

• Complete the Reading and key concepts, and then watch the Evan Thomas video below in preparation for your Learning Activity and Discussion topic 1.

Unit 1 Key Concepts:

Good communication is audience-centered, has a clear purpose, is ethical, uses appropriate technology, and is efficient.

• A good communication process overcomes barriers created within the organization by the sender and by the perceptions of the receiver.
• Communicating effectively in the workplace demands an understanding of both sender and receiver, as well as intent.
• When writing a persuasive business memo, make sure to persuade your audience with a logical argument and provide any support (statistics, research, financial data, expert responses, etc.) for your reasoning.

Access the Evan Thomas biography oncerning the presenter in the videos in this course located in Course Documents.

Please review video 1. Evan Thomas, former editor at large for Newsweek Magazine, shares strategies for student writers to improve their writing. The full interview has been broken up into segments that are included throughout this course. Please take a few moments to watch the video and think about how Thomas’s advice applies to you and your writing. This video, along with your Reading, key concepts, and Learning Activity (to check your understanding) will assist in preparing you for the Discussions this week.

Based on your reading, key concepts,

and the Learning Activity from Unit 1 along with the Evan Thomas video,

you will apply what you reviewed to critique a bad business memo.

Read the example of the short memo below and respond to the following checklist items:

Checklist:

• Who is the sender?
• Who is the receiver?
• What is the intent?
• How might you clarify this memo?
• Is it persuasive in getting the recipient to act? Why or why not?

Memo:

You will need to send a confirmation as to what the outside limits are in line with the budget parameters delineated in the meeting last week. Send it on to production afterwards. This is priority so please expedite.

Timothy E. Flood (2008). MBA Fundamentals Business Writing (Kaplan Test Prep)