1.3 How Do I Use This Book?
Your instructor will tell you how to use this book. For example, if you’re in a flipped classroom, each chapter will prepare you for the activities and discussions you’ll have in class. Still, you’re a busy student with a lot to do. You might not have time to read every word. So how can you still benefit from the book?
Ideal Scenario
The ideal way to use this book is to do a few reflection questions by freewriting, thinking about the questions or discussing them with a friend or partner. You’d then read each chapter, including the stories and examples. You can also do the interactive content.
Short on Time
Meet Brenda Knights
At the beginning of each chapter, you’ll find a short narrative by Brenda Knights. Ms. Knights is the President of Səýeḿ, the economic development branch of the Kwantlen Nation. Səýeḿ has 11 companies in a wide range of industries, including a gift shop, a security services company, a marketing and design company, an IT company, land development and a restaurant. In addition, Ms. Knights is a member of the Indigenous Business and Investment Council and a Member at Large of Tourism Langley, and she’s pursuing an MA in Leadership through Trinity Western University. This means that Ms. Knights has extensive workplace communication experience and uses her communication skills every day.
Səýeḿ is guided by the seven traditional laws of the Kwantlen Nation: health, happiness, generations, generosity, humbleness, forgiveness and understanding. You will see these principles throughout the narratives.
These narratives have been included in the book to help you explore the nuances of workplace communication and to see how some of the issues we’re discussing in theory play out in reality. The goal is not to give you an easy answer, but to help you understand the material in a deeper way and encourage you to reflect on your own communication values. When you read the narratives, ask yourself:
- What parallels can I draw between the story and the rest of the chapter?
- Are there places where the narrative seems to oppose the material in the rest of the chapter? How can I make sense of this apparent contradiction?
- Can I find connections between the narratives and my own life experience?
Why Doesn’t This Book Just Tell Me What To Do?
Especially if you went to school in an education system that emphasizes memorization and repetition, you might be frustrated by parts of this book. That’s because this book resists telling you the “right” way to do things. It will give you strategies for success, show you examples of successful workplace documents, and introduce you to people who are doing workplace communication well, but you won’t find many templates.
That’s because business communication is all about making decisions. If your instructor tells you that there’s just one way to write a memo, you will struggle when you get hired in a workplace that does memos differently, or that doesn’t use memos at all. Already, social media, Slack/Discourse and other new communication platforms are changing the way we communicate in the workplace. If you can make good communication decisions and use the habits of a successful writer, you can be successful anywhere.
Attribution
“How Do I Use This Book?” and “Why Doesn’t This Book Just Tell Me What To Do?” from Business Writing For Everyone by Arley Cruthers are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
