Lesson Two / 01/04/2009

(Absent: Ji Eun Kang)

Lesson Summary

In the second lesson, we had a look at this wiki, including the basics of how to:

• Register and log on.
• Navigate round the site.
• Make changes by editing, adding to, and saving pages.

We moved on to a discussion and feedback activity looking at some of the misconceptions about business writing (see attached document below). The teacher emphasised:

• The need to learn something about the expectations of your reader, particularly cultural expectations, in regard to issues of formality and style.
• The need to stick to established company guidelines and templates in cases where you are not sure of convention - some examples came up of differences in template style even between departments within ING.
• The need to think about the layout and design of the page as much as the linguistic content of sentences, in order to make the task of reading correspondence easier for the reader.

Plastic wallets and course documents were handed out to those absent last week.

Self-study Practice

The homework for this lesson was to edit your own profile (the summary of the interview conducted during the needs analysis last week, written up by your partner and e-mailed to the teacher). You can do this without registering on wikispaces by using a guest profile, but it's preferable for class participants to register, in order to identify who makes changes more easily. This is to be completed by Monday, April 6th.

Resources

Resources used in this lesson: