An investigation into the need to develop writing skill in sales at amaccao concrete plant

The purpose ofthe study is to examine the reality of writing skill in Sales at Amaccao Concrete Plant.Moreover, the aim of researching and suggesting some methods is to raise members’kno

April, 2018

Huyen

Dao Thi Ngoc Huyen

Writing is a form of art and an integral part of language learning It always plays

an important role in daily life as well as learning and business Writing, like speaking,

is a fundamental form of communication, on which future job opportunities and careeradvancement will depend A strong economy with business growth and jobdevelopment needs well-educated employees, and one of the components of a goodeducation is the mastery of strong writing and communication skills The purpose ofthe study is to examine the reality of writing skill in Sales at Amaccao Concrete Plant.Moreover, the aim of researching and suggesting some methods is to raise members’knowledge about the importance of practicing writing skill in English

To answer the questions of the study, the researcher adopted the experimentalapproach All members in Sales are the subjects of this investigation especially thestudy distinguishes the proficiency in writing between normal staff and managerialposition The research indicates that there are statistically significant differences at thelevel on English writing skill among members in this department

Based on those findings, the study recommended the necessity of implementingprograms for people who have low English level to bring about better outcomes inemployees' writing skill of the English language It was also suggested that furtherresearches should be conducted related to other skills of writing

Throughout my research journey, I have received invaluable assistance from

my supervisor, friends, colleagues and family The thesis would have been impossiblewithout their support, encouragement and suggestions They have provided me withnot only their expertise but also consideration throughout the research journey I alsoowe my colleagues and friends special thanks for their sharing and understanding ofresearch life

Moreover, I would like to express my gratitude towards teachers at English

Department especially my supervisor Mrs Duong Thi Hong Tham for her

encouragement and guidance through this thesis She has inspired me to becomeconfident in myself as a researcher I also would like to thank the Sales members atACP for their advice, expertise and time

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1.5: General information and English levels in Sales.

Table 3.2.1: The most difficult document when utilizing writing skill in daily

tasks

Bar chart 3.2.1: Mistakes made when contacting customers in written language.

Pie chart 3.2.1: The frequency of mistakes regarding syntax made.

Pie chart 3.2.2: The main difficulties in writing skill in English in Sales at ACP

Pie chart 3.2.3: Staffs’ studying plan.

Table 3.2.3: Reasons for not studying at an English course.

Table 3.2.4: The effect of writing skill on the turnover in Sales.

Table appendix 1: Questions for the post-survey.

Table appendix 2: Questions for the interview guide for the participants.

Image appendix 3: Example of popular grammar mistakes in writing skill in Sales at

ACP

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ABSTRACT ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES v

CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1

1.1 Rationale 1

1.2 Previous studies 1

1.3 Aims of the study 5

1.4 Research subjects 6

1.5 Scope of the study 7

1.6 Research methodology 8

1.6.1 Introduction 8

1.6.2 Research hypothesis 8

1.6.3 Method of data collection 9

1.6.4 Method of data analysis 11

1.6.5 Research process 11

1.7 Organization of the study 14

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 15

2.1 Definition of writing 15

2.2 The Writing Skill 16

2.3 Business Writing 17

2.3.1 Definition 17

2.3.2 Purposes of Business Writing 17

2.3.3 Style of Business Writing 17

2.3.4 Some types of business writing 18

2.4 Steps of writing process 20

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH FINDINGS 21

3.1 Introduction 22

3.2 Findings 22

3.2.1 The reality of writing skill in Sales 22

3.2.2 The main difficulties in writing skill in Sales 25

3.2.3 Reasons for staffs’ poor writing skill in Sales 28

3.2.4 Staffs’ expectation to improve the situation 30

CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 32

4.1 Recommendations 32

4.2 Limitations 33

CONCLUSION 34 REFERENCES I APPENDICES II APPENDIX 1: Post-survey questionnaire III APPENDIX 2: Interview guide for the participants IV APPENDIX 3: Mistakes made by staff when contacting potential clients via email V

CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY

1.1 Rationale

English plays an essential role in our society for two fundamental reasons Onthe one hand, reality has shown that English is the second most widely spokenlanguage all over the world On the other hand, English not only serves as a means ofcommunication, but also brings people from distinct skin color, region or social statuscloser together It is associated with our daily life, especially in a growing speed at

present, Vietnam has become an appealing destination for businesses and attracted a

huge amount of  foreign direct investment, followed by a rising demand of Englishlearners General English includes four skills: foreign listening, speaking, reading andwriting All of which are indispensable and cannot be separated Regarding business,especially at Amaccao's sales department, writing skill is more important than otherEnglish skills

During my internship, the researcher was given the valuable advice from

colleagues and found that their writing skill were substandard, especially when

exchanging emails as well as in quotes and matching There are still some errors ingrammar, vocabulary, spelling, etc As a result the thesis will be like a miniaturepicture to have a more objective look and recognize the importance of business writingskill in Sales at ACP

1.2 Previous studies

Nowadays, English is very popular at different ages There are four skills:listening, speaking, reading and writing They are so important in our life becauseVietnam is developing significantly All sectors in our country are attractinginvestment from foreign investors Therefore, apart from Vietnamese, the secondlanguage is very essential It is a way of linking people together To connect

conveniently, speaking and writing skill are concentrated on so much People cancommunicate either by speaking or by writing through email, message, comment onfacebook, etc However, in this research, the author wants to focus on the studies thatrelated to writing skill In the world, there are a lot of researches related to this skillespecially in European countries, America and Asia countries.

Rosenbluth and Michael Reed (2002): They had a study on English writing skill

in a enterprise It is a real estate firm in France These researchers proceeded aninvestigation in Sales of this company In Sales department, there are ten people whohave various English levels and are from different countries such as France, China,Japan, Korea, etc It is well-known that the French, the Chinese or the Japanese utilizeEnglish not well According to a report in November, the French has the poorest level

of English in European Community They are not good at both four English skills:speaking, writing, reading and listening However, it is a fact that the French always try

to improve English every day In this study, Rosenbluth and Michael Reed divided intotwo groups: group 1 consists of 4 members who have better English ability than othergroups, group 2 includes 6 members who do not have good English skill Manager andvice manager in Sales belong to group 1 They graduated from well-known universitiessuch as Paris Diderot - Paris 7 University, Paris-Sud University, etc They are good atfour English skills especially when contacting customers via email or on phone, theyrarely make mistake In group 2, members are not good at English who make grammarmistakes regularly The author applied quantitative method only in this paper All dataare collected through some questions that members in Sales here have to answers such

as “Do you make a mistake in writing?”, “How do you feel writing skill in English?”

“Which is the greatest problem when contacting client by writing?”, etc Data wasanalyzed and not calculated and tabulated Because Rosenbluth worked at here nearly 5months, he had objective and subjective view about the reality of using English inSales However, Michael Reed did not chance to work here, he described not deeply allaspects A total of 20 documents related to exchange between salesperson and

customer on September 2001 by writing They were gathered by the authors based ondaily transaction that he observed during working time

Charles_Bazerman (2008)– in his study described deeply the reality of usingwriting skill in English in a business that specializes in construction field It is a bigscope which are nearly 50 people, including both employees and managers Throughthis research, the readers see clearly study’s purposes, the author wants to point out theproblem related to writing skill in his subject He also recommended some solutions toimprove their writing skill The population of the study included 35 staff in alldepartments and 15 people in management division In this business, there are fivemain departments, they are accounting, personnel, planning, material, architecturedepartment, in each department, employees have a variety of English levels.Correspondingly, the author had to spend three months observing and investigating.Because scope of this study is so wide, conducting a thorough research is not a simpletask The author divided researched targets into 2 groups: the graduated fromLinguistics Faculty and the graduated from other faculties Surprisingly, the resultsshow that the graduated from Linguistics Faculty make more mistakes in writing thanthe others, which is hard to believe In addition, collected data showed lack of use ofprogress writing skill because there was a lack of skills related to organization andrevision in the writing process The study also suggested some solutions for theproblem such as organizing an advanced English course, inviting specialists to share 2-

3 nights/week, utilizing available sources (e-learning, read books and documents inEnglish, organizing some lessons to share about learning English experience, etc.) Theresults of the research illustrated a remarkable improvement in English writing skill forstaff and employers

In the study “ Improving writing skills in Customer Service department at ShangZheng Logistics Co., Ltd ” Huang (2009) cited in Huang (2010) concentrated on theways to enhance writing skill in an accounting department of a logistics company inChina Chinese people use English quite bad, they always want to use their language

only However, logistics is a type of business that has to connect between multipleparties and multiple countries From there, it requires the CS staff have knowledge both

in their mother tongue and in other languages, concrete language here is English

Moreover, because English is regarded as a second language in the world, most people

communicate by its language and the researcher also wanted to stress the importance ofEnglish The task of a CS employee is so diverse They have to create bookingaccording to customer request and most foreign clients use English to order booking

CS staff have to understand their request to release booking Besides, they also needfollow the feeder and mother vessel schedule, when having any change they have tocontact via email in English to solve problem if any Actually, CS staff avoidmisunderstandings, they need understand deeply to response and exchange effectivelywith clients especially potential one According to the author's study, there are fivestaff and one manager in this department They feel that it is difficult to work withforeign partners because they often make some special grammatical errors in English

For example:

Client: I want you to check debit note and handle it asap which I sent yesterday

CS staff: I receive it yesterday and I replied your email at once”

Misunderstanding happened regularly here due to the using of vocabulary,grammar, etc Furthermore, in this example "asap" stands for “as soon as possible”, it isamazing and difficult to understand deeply the its meaning Sometimes, it makes thereceiver confused Although their English is quite good, acronyms are notrecommended constantly The main purpose of this study is to evaluate the status ofEnglish writing skill here, find out the difficulties that they are facing and suggest somesolutions Descriptive qualitative method is used when carrying out the study Theprimary data was collected by personal interviews daily However, these interviewshappened when all members were not too busy because logistics field requires high

charge of it so big In collecting data, the writer took the following steps: observing andchecking the emails (email only error), gathering and classifying the errors in theseemails, etc At the weekends, manager and all staff discuss or review the weeklyworking and their difficulties The researcher holds the small interviews to survey andask them some questions that related to writing skill They check, review all mistakesthat consist of grammar, spelling, content, etc After that, they experienced togetherand avoid repeating those mistakes In analyzing the data, the writer identified theparticular grammar error and contextual types, vocabulary mistakes, spelling, etc Allthese mistakes were classified carefully and clearly In addition, classified data obtainprecise result about the reasons of making mistakes in writing in English

1.3 Aims of the study

Sales professionals are particularly skilled at using the written language topersuade customers to purchase the company’s products and services or at least payattention to its advertisements However, most people in the business world finds itnecessary to persuade someone else to take an action based on written material theyhave sent Therefore, this study is made with the main purposes as follows:

o To investigate and analyze the reality of writing skill in Sales.

o To present the main difficulties when contacting clients by means of writing.

o To point out the reasons for staffs’ poor writing.

o To improve writing skill in English by giving some solutions and suggestions.They also mean that the study will answer the following questions:

o What is the reality of writing skill in Sales?

o What are the difficulties in writing skill in Sales at Amaccao Concrete Plant?

o What are the reasons for staffs’ poor writing?

o Which solution does improve writing skill in English in Sales at Amaccao Concrete Plant?

1.4 Research subjects

There are many kinds of business writing methods and styles that have influence

on companies, corporations, governments, and institutions communicate with eachother and share information ACP specializes in construction field with abundantclients that include both Vietnamese and foreign customers For Vietnamese, it is notdifficult to communicate and negotiate because of the same culture and language Forforeign ones, sometimes, it is difficult for Salesperson They might be surprised tolearn that the various types of business writing such as: emails, letters, memos andformal invitations are of relatively similar style

The population of this investigation consists of twelve members in Sales Theyinclude the manager, vice/ deputy manager and all sales staff, especially they are alsothe author’s colleagues who help a lot The researcher joined in Sales as an intern fromJanuary to present It is about four months, during which time the author madeconversation and made the acquaintance with daily tasks The selection of participants

is mainly based on the real relationship between them and the researcher The criteriaused to choose the qualified subjects are their formal education They graduated fromother different universities and majors However, they have the passion for Sales Theyalways make an effort to get the highest turnover In this working environment, English

is an essential factor, because the main customer is foreign, it requires that all membershave English ability The study is conducted only in Sales at ACP generally To bemore specific, contracts, emails and price quotations will be mentioned and taken intoaccount The population’s ages ranged from 27 to 43 years old They consist of singleand married people To protect participants’ privacy, the purpose of this investigationwas sought through the communication inside Sales department only before data wasshowed and analyzed

1.5 Scope of the study

(University degree)

English Certificate

3 Staff (10 people)

Male(4 people) Good degree: 3 staff

Average degree: 1 staff

Excellent degree: 1 staffGood degree: 3 staffAverage degree: 2 staff

TOEIC:

>650: 1 staff500-600: 2 staff450-500: 3 staff

No certificate: 1staff

Table 1.5: General information and English levels in Sales.

All staff in Sales that include both manager, vice/ deputy manager and staff areemploying writing skill every day For them, it is an important and popular skill,because they usually contact customers or clients through emails in English However,there are some errors in emails that are normally happening

In Sales, Management Division includes the manger and deputy manager Themanager is female and graduated from Foreign Trade University with ExcellentDegree Besides, she also has Toeic Certificate with mark 755, her speaking skill is

quite good especially when negotiating and communicating with clients Nevertheless,she sometimes makes several grammar mistakes when using emails

Deputy manager is the man who graduated from an economic university He isgood at negotiating with customers without support from the interpreter and is quitegood at writing when contacting foreign partners through email However, he has to goout and meet potential customers regularly, his writing skill in English does notimprove a lot

There are ten sales staff, four of whom are male and the rest are female.

Although the male staff graduated with good certificate, their English ability is notenough especially in writing skill There is only one man who has Toeic Certificate(>650) Their difficulty is grammar especially in tenses They do not know how to useEnglish tenses

As for the female group, their English level in general is better than the maleone At work, they cannot perform as efficiently as men, but in learning English, theyare more hard- working Every day after work, they spend 2 hours going to Englishcenter to learn Correspondingly, English ability has been improved significantly.However, because they mainly take part in communication course, writing skill is notfocused on much enough

1.6 Research methodology

1.6.1 Introduction

This study will help readers understand more clearly about the importance ofwriting skill in business and especially in Sales at Amaccao Concrete Plant This partdeals with the methodology, design and procedure of the investigation It introducesthe research hypothesis, the methods being used and the data analysis procedures.1.6.2 Research hypothesis

Firstly, the researcher starts to investigate all members in Sales They comefrom the different levels of English Then, supposing that these individuals make somemistakes when contacting clients through writing tools every day, the author tries toanswer why they make those mistakes? The researcher also attempts to look for theways to improve its status

1.6.3 Method of data collection

As the researcher mentioned in the previous parts, the subject of thisinvestigation is all members in Sales only Therefore, the data comes from this mainpopulation, through contacting and observing the daily jobs, the author had opportunity

to interact, practice with some documents using writing skill They are economiccontracts, price quotations, or memos, emails, etc However, because the author isworking as an intern, her job is also partly different from co-workers’ Daily workrequires many skills, so the author had to practice and try more and more to meet thejob requirement

Every day, making some mistakes in job is inevitable, nevertheless, they arealso valuable experiences during the internship Because the researcher is an internonly, this study analyses things that she approaches and works on

As mentioned above, the investigation attempts to prove the importance ofwriting skill in business especially in Sales at ACP, the researcher points out the reality

of using English in this working environment, the difficulties that they have to face injob, figuring out their English level, regular mistakes in writing and recommend somesolutions For the purposes of this research, in depth interviews were carried out,the use of unstructured questionnaire is employed and brought many active results.Some certain questions were prepared and included in the unstructured questionnaire

During the study, the researcher shows that qualitative method seems to be themost suitable methodology It is applied and brings many active results, theinvestigation was conducted with participant observation, practice and contingent

interview as three research instruments The data and information gained frominterviews will be collected, analyzed and used for reference in making suggestions togradually improve writing skill of both management division and staffs here There isnot only one interview but also many small interviews happen during working process.Author takes advantage of every breaking time, it may be breakfast before workingtime or lunch together and after these small talks, researcher gained much efficientdata To do this, the author had to attempt to broaden her relationships because makingmistake in business situations is difficult to accept Contacting in business through isvery popular and important, thus formal meetings play essential role that help firmsachieve sales target or gain high profit In the world, English is known as the secondlanguage, everyone uses it to communicate with other people who come from differentcountries in life and business To have effective communication, the involved twoparties have to understand mutually

One of the main problems is to point out the errors in the Sales department’swritings because of the fact that almost of them are experienced and have worked inthe Department for years Checking grammar as well as using uncommon words makesthe researcher feels confused Sometimes, the straightforward discussion aboutlinguistic difficulties should be encouraged Several contract templates, contactcustomer emails were also collected and gathered However, the subjects also knowthat their sharing would be collected and analyzed Correspondingly, none of the datapresented here is prompted or elicited in any way

The author collected both economic contracts and price quotation, or some dailyemails that are used in English Apart from foreign clients, domestic customers alsomake considerable contribution to the company, the researcher grouped bothVietnamese and English versions It is undeniable that when contacting potentialcustomer, formal texts are employed popularly and essentially It leads to the cause forsigning a successful contract

1.6.4 Method of data analysis

Both the qualitative method and quantitative method are employed in theinvestigation However, the qualitative method is used mainly Through dailyconversations, content analysis was used to analyze the data which collected fromsmall interviews This method is the type of study whereby data gathered is categorized

in themes and sub-themes, so as to be comparable The main advantage of data analysisthrough the qualitative method is simple and easy to collect and report At the sametime, the author also produces results that may then measured using quantitativetechniques Furthermore, content analysis enables the researcher to structure thequalitative data collected in a way that satisfied the accomplishment of researchsubjects

The qualitative data obtained from interviews will be synthesized andsummarized based on the aims of the research which are also specified through theresearch questions The data obtained from the observation will be calculated andtransferred into numerical form All the answers to close-ended questions will beanalyzed and presented in forms of pie charts and bar charts while the answers foropen-ended questions will be summarized according to the research questions Thequalitative data obtained from interviews will be synthesized and summarized based onthe aims of the research which are also specified through the research questions

1.6.5 Research process

Small interviews are happened regularly in Sales because the researcher has totake advantage of time when all members work at office However, to obtain thesufficient and useful data, the author had to prepare carefully There are three stages asbelow:

Stage 1: Preparation

In any Sales, the economic contract becomes a familiar document It plays anessential role in any negotiation or business projects, price quotation and emails aswell In this stage, the researcher had opportunity to look at economic contract of Saleswith clients They include both domestic customers and foreign customers Moreover,material cost is updated in daily working, after updating this change, Salesperson willamend its change on price quotations and send to related customers Additionally,emails seemed to be the most convenient and easy way to keep contact with potentialcustomers and regular clients Email includes both formal and informal form Writingskill is identified by many subjects However, the researcher chooses three subjects toinvestigate These research subjects are very familiar with people, scope of this study isalso narrowed in Sales only As a result, it is not difficult to make a deep investigation.After identifying research subjects and scope of study clearly, the author collectedrelated data, reviewed them and prepared checking tools such as dictionary or google

Stage 2: Implementation

Firstly, the researcher will observe all emails which are sent by CC in theresearchers’ inbox Because author is working as an intern, thus emails are sent by CCstrictly However, sometimes it is a great chance to interact economic contacts andprice quotation Some contracts, price quotation and typical emails are recorded andsaved in separate document files with the clear names The researcher implementedduring the internship months here After collecting five economic contracts, three pricequotation and around seven daily emails in English, the researcher held unstructuredinterviews through small talks at Sales department These interviews happened in order

to point out some mistake including popular and serious errors All members candiscuss to give the most optimal solutions that will help improve writing skill here

English ability depending the kind of clients In Sales, there are three people who havequite good English, thus they will be in charge of related English documents andforeign clients mainly It is a fact that when they are absent, other staffs will back upthem and solve all related problems However, making mistakes in daily emails orcontracts is normal and sometimes it is out of question and difficult to explain formisunderstanding The researcher also mentioned and had some discussions about theirdifficulty when using English especially in writing In these discussions, every staffcan share their experience to learn English well or give some comments for people whouse English not well The researcher always stressed that all discussions, small talks orunstructured interviews are not for criticism but for sharing After that, with thecollected findings, the researcher analyzed and synthesized all the data to find out theanswers for the research questions.

Some considerations about free access and privacy matters should be taken intoaccount Although the access of these sites is free, no authentic private information arepublished in the examples provided in this study Private personal information in thestatuses and comments has been modified, but keeping similarities with the original as

a proof of the authenticity of the written words

Stage 3: Data analysis procedure

The data and email, contract or quotation sample are gathered and classifiedcarefully They were used to analyze the popular errors such as grammar, spelling orvocabulary by the participants Besides the using of Vietnamese in contract properly,when translating it into English also needs carefulness They need to be translatednaturally, using correct grammar and vocabulary After work, the researcher will comeback home and point out mistakes in these examples Author spent time reviewing andchecking them After checking, underlining and highlighting errors The entiremistakes collected through observation were grouped with the aim to make the analysis

procedure easier The results were transcribed into the report, charts, tables anddiagrams.

In this study, the author prepared some research questions and to answer them,qualitative method was used The qualitative data was collected based on the reality ofusing English in Sales department Both advantages and disadvantages in improvingwriting skill in English The sharing comes from members in small talks every day.They can be positive opinions and negative ones The researcher gathered them,analyzed them and came to final conclusions

1.7 Organization of the study

This study is structured as followings:

Chapter 1 positions the study by recounting the background of the researcher,followed by details of the research site The previous studies, research subjects, scope

of the study, research methodology and the significance of the study are alsointroduced

Chapter 2 reviews the literature relevant to the research problem, commencingwith a discussion of the positioning of writing English in business and point out someprevious researches

Chapter 3 presents the research findings

Chapter 4 points out some recommendations and suggestions to enhance writingskill in Sales at Amaccao Concrete Plant

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

OVERVIEW OF RELATED THEORIES

2.1 Definition of writing

“Writing is a process organizing the idea, opinions, and feelings into writtenform It is a complex activity with the control language both of the sentences level(grammatical, structure, vocabulary, punctuation, spelling, and later information) andbeyond the sentence rank (organizing and integrating information into cohesive andcoherent paragraph or text)”

(Barly,Bram Write Well: Improving Writing Skill.(Yogyakarta: Kanisius,1995))

According to Nunan (2003):

- Writing are physical and mental act: It is about discovering initiatives, thinkingabout how to communicate and develop them into statements, sentences andparagraphs that will be comprehensible to a reader

- Writing has aim to express and impress: writers have to choose or select themost advantageous medium for the writing Each types has a different level of difficultwhich determined by its objectives

- Writing is a process It is also a product: the writer creates, plans, writesvarious drafts, revises, edits and publishes

Pincas also states that writing is a way of communicating a message to a readerfor a purpose The purposes of writing are to express one’s self, to provide informationfor one’s reader, to persuade one’s reader, and to create a literary work.

(Pincas, Teaching English Writing : Essential Language teaching Series(London: The Macmilan Publisher ,Ltd,1998))

Based on the definitions above, a definition of writing skill can be obtained.Writing is a productive process done through some stages First of all, the writer have

to explore and transmit ideas, thought and feeling into written form are also essentialand critical Next, the writer conducts a number of revising process to carry out agrammatically and orderly texts The writing productions are in the forms of readabletexts which should be meaningful to the readers who read the writing

2.2 The Writing Skill

Orwig (1999: 2) says that writing skill is a productive skill that is morecomplicated than it seems at first, and often seems to be the most difficult of the skillssince it has a number of micro skills such as using orthography correctly, spelling andpunctuation conventions, using vocabulary in a correct way and using the appropriatestyle

Bello (1997:1) reveals that writing is a continuous process of discovering how

to find the most effective language for communicating one's feelings and thoughts Heconfirms that writing is challenging, whether it is in a native language or in a secondlanguage

The writing skill in " English for Palestine " shows that:

o Writing dictated material correctly using correct punctuation

o Arranging scrambled letters into the words

o Arranging scrambled words into coherent sentences

o Transcoding information in diagrammatic display into written text

Archibald (2001:153-160) gives a definition of writing as a skill that needsknowledge and proficiency in many areas It is a multidimensional skill It is a complexskill that results from the interaction of the writer's knowledge, experience, skill andthe cognitive demands of the task

2.3 Business Writing

2.3.1 Definition

Business writing refers to reports, proposals, memorandums, contracts, emails,and other forms of writing used in organizations to communicate with internal orexternal audiences Business writing is a type of professional communication It is alsoknown as business communication and professional writing (Richard Nordquist-2018)

Brent W.Knapp says that “the main aim of business writing is that it should beunderstood clearly when read quickly” “The message should be well planned, simple,clear, and direct” ( A Project Manager’s Guide to Passing the Project ManagementExam, 2006)

2.3.2 Purposes of Business Writing