Chapter 1: Professional Communications
Learning Objectives
- Distinguish between the nature of English and Communications courses.
- Explain the importance of studying Communications.
- Identify communication-related skills and personal qualities favoured by employers.
- Consider how communication skills will ensure your future professional success.
- Recognize that the quality of your communication represents the quality of your company.
- Distinguish between personal and professional uses of communications technology in ways that ensure career success and personal health.
- ENL1004 Course Learning Requirement 3.2: Integrate appropriate technology and design fundamentals to support communication objectives.
- ENL1004 Course Learning Requirement 4.4: Identify the value, limitations, and hazards of Generative AI and other transformative technologies.
- Illustrate the communication process to explain the end goal of communication.
- Troubleshoot communication errors by breaking down the communication process into its component parts.
- ENL1004 Course Learning Requirement 2.1: Analyze information to determine purpose and meaning.
- ENL1004 Course Learning Requirement 2.2: Use paraphrasing and summarizing strategies to ensure accurate comprehension of a variety of message types.
Though you may want to jump right into action with writing messages, it’s important to step back and think first about what we’re doing when we’re communicating so that we can be thoughtful about our approach to the process whether we’re writing, reading, speaking, or listening. In this first chapter, we start by answering in more detail the question raised in the Introduction about why you even need a Communications course after the English courses you did in high school. Next, we paint a picture of what communicating looks like in the modern workplace. At the heart of the chapter, we very lightly touch on communication theory, which will be as theoretical as this guide to professional communications gets, only to establish the terms for how to troubleshoot miscommunication in practice. Finally, we consider your responsibilities as an active listener in the communication process so that you are prepared to be an excellent learner in your classes and conversational partner in all the interactions that lead to your professional success.
