About the Effective Writing Skills Program:

The training was structured around the following exercises/activities:

- Understanding the framework of communication. There are various types of

communication (imagine rooms in a building) like listening, speaking, presenting,
writing, negotiating, etc. Then below these are some pillars of communication
(imagine building blocks in a building that support the rooms). There are 3 building
blocks – Purpose, Understanding the Audience and Persuasion. Finally, there is
a Foundation (imagine the foundation on which the building blocks are
constructed). The Foundation is basically about personnel values, beliefs,
genuineness and intent. This is what people notice first before they listen to or read
your message.

- Understanding the writing process. The best way to ensure that a writing task will
be successful is to divide the writing process into the following five steps:

• Prewriting
• Drafting
• Revising
• Editing
• Publishing

- Writing a benchmark letter to assess how I write in terms of language, grammar,

and sequence. Then exchanging letter with a group member to get feedback
according to certain criteria. One of the key criteria is understanding the purpose of
a document before starting to write then articulating this purpose right at the
beginning of the document. From example writings, we experienced that most
people tend to state purpose right at the end which is not effective.

Purpose has two parts:

• what the writer wants (you should state this upfront) and
• what is expected from the reader (the so-what or call to action)

Most writers/communicators do not articulate purpose until too late and many will not
mention the call to action at the end.

- Structure of an effective message. There is a beginning with Purpose, a middle part

with Elaboration and Details and an ending which is usually about Next Steps or a
Call to Action (CTA)

- Understanding the meaning and application of indices that measure readability.

Readability has 3 dimensions: visual in terms of how the document looks - thematic
in terms of logical flow, no unnecessary repetition and with a beginning, middle and
end - and density. Documents should have low density. This means simpler words,
shorter sentences of average 15 words, 3-4 lines per paragraph, etc. We studied a
readability statistics tool in MS Word that helps to identify average sentence length
and document complexity.

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- Recognizing and writing sentences in the active and passive voice. Both are
legitimate but the use of too much passive voice makes a document weak and
unimpressive.

- Discussing the role of style in effective writing and the image this conveys. We
focused on what is called conversational style in writing. This is essentially writing
in almost the same way that one speaks to an individual. There is no unnecessary
formality or bureaucracy. The conversational style is direct, simple and effective. In
certain cases, however, the style may have to vary depending on the audience. An
example of this could be more formal writing style to a government organization. We
emphasized that the audience you communicate with is a big factor in choosing the
right writing style.

- Assessing the needs and priorities of writer’s readers/audience is very

important. The audience has certain expectations (WIIFM – What’s In It For Me?).
These can be things like:

• improved quality of service;

• reduced costs or increased return on investment;
• increased participation of stakeholders;
• improved efficiency;
• timeliness;
• higher skills level;
• fairness and justice;
• increased user-friendliness, etc.

- Structuring paragraphs and writing topic sentences that have impact. If one knows
how to write paragraphs; writing letters, memos, emails will become easier. The best
way is by starting the paragraph with the first “topic” sentence, making it easy to
complete the rest of the paragraph. As per below example:

There are a number of things that are special about Apple.

Firstly, Secondly,
Finally, I want to say …

- Using brainstorming and creativity tools. We looked at how one can generate
more ideas through what is called free writing, through brainstorming and through
the Cubing process. The Cubing process is where you look at 6 aspects of an entity
to get more ideas – e.g. description, analysis, comparison, application, pros and
cons and so on.

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 Appreciating how the process of Persuasion works.

1 2 3
Emotion Filter Logic Filter USP Filter

presentation content something unique

People are persuaded only when 1- you can appeal to their Emotion and 2- you can
also appeal to their Logic and 3- when you offer something extra to give that little
additional push.

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