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Deborah DeGolyer
DeGolyer Associates
When you
have to write
letters or other
documents for
work, do you
find it hard to
get started?
Do you have
difficulty
choosing the
r ight words
and organising the information?
Recently, I was speaking with a friend
whose job is to check English letters
written by staff in a local company before
the letters are sent out. She told me about
a very poorly written letter that she’d just
read. After spending a minute or so marking
it up for revision, she noticed that the
letter wasn’t written by a local Hong Kong
staff member – but by a native-speaker
colleague in the UK!
Surprised? I wasn’t. Good writing
requires more than the right words and
proper grammar. And being a native
English speaker doesn’t guarantee that
you can write well. But even if English is
not your first language, you can learn the
skills to write clear business documents.
In addition to editing, I provide
business communication training,
specialising in writing skills. In more
than 12 years of training and coaching,
primarily for businesses, I’ve discovered
that the writing problems people have
are more often caused by unclear thinking
than by language ability. So unlike many
English trainers in Hong Kong, I focus first
on the thinking skills that facilitate clear
written communication. After that, we
look at the language issues (vocabulary
and grammar).
I begin a course with how to think
from the perspective of your readers. What
do they want or need from the document?
How do they feel? What do you want them
to do in response to your e-mail, letter or
report? The course then goes on to help
learners decide the best structure of a text,
one that will make it easy for the reader
to follow and understand. This structure is
often based on an imagined ‘conversation’
between writer and reader.
An extra benefit of this approach is
that the thinking you do from the reader’s
perspective also makes the writing itself
easier. The more clearly you think, the more
clearly (and easily) you write. And the same
skills apply to speaking. Start by thinking
about what your audience (eg, customer or
colleague) wants, how they feel and what
they need to do. Then structure what you
say around those points.
My courses are based on information
processing principles that provide the
basis for ‘brain-friendly’ structure, clarity
and conciseness. (For an overview of these
principles, take a look at my ‘Good Business
Writing Habits’ articles posted to our
company website listed below.)
My husband, Michael and I set up our
company in 2005 to provide a research and training consultancy for businesses, political
leaders, government departments and nongovernment
organisations.
Michael can help you find the
information you need to meet business
or organisational objectives. He does this
by analysing information he elicits from
surveys, interviews and focus groups.
I joined the WBOC in 2005 after
attending the workshop ‘How to start
and run your own business’. I’ve benefited
so much from the club’s seminars and
round tables – as well as from personal
support members have given me. I’m
pleased to be able to help our club by
editing this newsletter, a job I began
last December.
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