Chapter 1: Professional Communications
Jordan Smith
Chapter 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.
- Select and use common, basic information technology tools to support communication.
- Illustrate the communication process to explain the end goal of communication.
- Troubleshoot communication errors by breaking down the communication process into its component parts.
- Reframe information gained from spoken messages in ways that show accurate analysis and comprehension.
Why Communications?
Let’s begin by answering the question that is probably on the mind of anyone enrolled in an introductory English Communications course. Why are you here? It’s probably not because you chose this course out of your natural enthusiasm for English classes. It’s because it is a requirement to advance in the program and graduate.
So why would the program administrators require you to take this course? Is it just a money grab? The short answer to the second question is: No. The answer to the first question is: because you need sharp communication skills to be able to apply the core skills you’re learning in your other courses in the program. This textbook’s first section expands on that answer in more detail so that you can proceed through this course in the right frame of mind. None of your course’s lessons make sense unless you realize that communications skills are not merely nice-to-have assets in your program and in life; they are absolutely necessary to your survivability in this social world and tough economy.
