Effective Business Writing Workshop Tutorials

We have noticed a very marked improvement in the grammar and overall writing ability of the staff who attended these three tutorials, especially their emails. For us, it was worth the time having 17 of our staff attend this series, as managers and supervisors report that they are undertaking much less editing as the writing style is much clearer and more grammatically correct.

Three tutorials especially suitable for staff whose first language is not English.

Grammar
Punctuation
Simple Sentence Structure

The first workshop tutorial focuses on the rules of English grammar; the second on punctuation; the third on how to structure sentences to make them instantly understandable.

Each workshop tutorial lasts for 3.5 hours and has:

Up to 20 participants
Boardroom style or u-shape layout
PowerPoint
Comprehensive workbooks which serve as reference books
Many practical exercises.

Workshop tutorials may be individually booked, booked as a duo and facilitated on the same day, or booked as a trio and facilitated at times suitable to the client organisation.

Tutorial One: Grammar

Recognising the three elements which comprise sentences:
• Independent clauses
• Subordinate clauses
• Phrases
The parts of a sentence
nouns; verbs; adjectives; adverbs; pronouns; articles; conjunctions, prepositions
The five elements of English grammar
case; number; person; tense; voice
Sentence structure
subject …verb …object—or— actors and actions
passive sentences – their place in sentence construction
Verbs as the powerhouse of the sentence
active; passive; the infinite; the gerund
Getting subjects and verbs to agree
When nouns are replaced by pronouns in the subjective; possessive; objective
Who and whom
Which one to use – and when

Tutorial Two: Punctuation

Why punctuate?
Punctuation helps readers understand. Poor punctuation may be misleading. For instance: ‘Let’s eat Mum’.
The elements of punctuation – what they do and how they may be used
• Apostrophes
• Brackets
• The colon
• The comma
• The dash
• Ellipses
• Full stop
• Hyphen
• Semi-colon
• Parenthesis
Some common confusables
Twenty common confusing elements in sentence structure ranging from nouns ending in ce and verbs ending with se to when to use which and when to use that.

Tutorial Three: Writing Clear and Simple Sentences

The propositional content of sentences
Sentences are written to convey specific thoughts or purposes. This makes each sentence ‘propositional’. The ‘proposition’ shapes the sentence’s content and context. Simply, this means:
• knowing clearly what are you trying to say
• using the appropriate words to say it
• deciding in what order you will write the words (syntax)
The clause as the basic unit of the sentence
dependent and independent clauses; what they are; how they work, phrases: what is a phrase?
Building simple sentences
identifying the proposition (the point of the sentence)
starting the sentence with the actor followed by the action
using pronouns for the actor; using verbs in the active voice for the action
Structuring compound sentences
sentences need to vary in length if the reader is to be engaged. Therefore, not all sentences may be simple.
Composing more elaborate – yet clear – sentences
Joining clauses and phrases
• coordinating conjunctions – FANBOYS
• subordinators
• conjunctive adverbs
Smoothing sentences into complete paragraphs
Starting paragraphs with a topic sentence
Summary of the three tutorials