LEARNING PORTFOLIO 1

1. How do we recognize and differentiate business messages from other types of

communication? Create a table comparing a business message found in an email or
an advertisement or a brochure with informal writing found on a site such as
Facebook.

Braun, Locker, &Kaczmarek (2016) wrote that:” Effective business communications

conform to specific conventions of medium, format, style, and tone to meet
audience needs as efficiently as possible.”

Informal Writing on
Business
Facebook
Format Defined by organizational Defined by platform apps
culture/ software

Elements of Style Salutation; simple, concrete Short sentences but making

language; short sentences
and paragraphs white space
and bullets/numbers for
emphasis; heading to guide
the reader; direct or indirect
method of development;
friendly; close
a point; words are simplified
using contractions and
abbreviations; include
slangs, figures of speech,
broken syntax and so on

Tone Polite but neutral; memos Friendly, informal and

go to internal simple
audiences/letters to
external audiences;
however, people in
positions of power – the
boss or the client – establish
the tone

2. Briefly explain three specific situations where communication skills will be

important in your future occupation?

 When presenting opinions in front of the crowd, especially colleagues.

 When writing a report or an email for work.
 When writing a curriculum vitae to apply for a job.

3. Describe a time when you experienced a breakdown in communication due to lack

of clarity or purposefulness of your, or someone else’s, verbal or non-verbal
symbols. What did you learn from this experience?
When my group and I went to Sai Gon Central Post Office for interviewing foreigners
about the differences between their countries and ours. There was a question about
gender gap, which was if people in their countries avoided physical interactions.
Because we did not mention about males and females, they misunderstood that we
asked about how they greeted each other, and it is common in their country to give
hugs or kisses on the cheeks as greeting. Afterwards, I have learnt to have clear
questions when asking other people.

PORTFOLIO REFLECTION

The relative value of the overall learning experience is having a broad understanding
of business communications and the importance of communications in business
environment. Business communications are completely different from other types of
communications so the most important thing of what I experienced is how to
differentiate business messages from normal communications to effectively
communicate with the right audiences. Besides that, explanation helps me to
transform complicated information into simpler forms to memorize and gain a
deeper understanding of what I have learnt. Some positive aspects of learning
resources, which are worth using in the future, can advance our future career as well
as having good communication skills which is often mentioned as one of the most
important requirements regardless of which position you are applying for. After
learning this session, I will consider who I am writing for and change my way of
writing so my messages would be much more suitable and less informal in business
environment.