Oral and Online Presentations Questions

1. Oral presentations give you the opportunity to practice and demonstrate your communication skills, including research, planning, writing, visual design, and interpersonal and nonverbal communication. They also give you the opportunity to practice thinking on your feet, grasping complex business issues, and handling challenging situations.

2. During the introduction of an oral presentation, you should arouse interest in your topic, establish your credibility, and prepare the audience for what is to come in the rest of the presentation; you should summarize your main idea and identify the major supporting points in the introduction.

3. In order to get your audience's attention during the introduction, you can tell a story, use humor, ask a question, pass around a sample, state a startling statistic, or unite the audience around a common goal.

4. In the close of your presentation, you should restate your major points, describe the next steps on where to go from here, and end on a strong note.

5. In order to ensure the success of an online presentation, you should send preview study materials ahead of time, keep your presentation as simple as possible, ask for feedback frequently since you will not be able to see any nonverbal cues from the audience, consider the viewing experience from the audience's point of view when preparing your presentation, make sure your audience can receive the type of content you plan on using, and allow plenty of time for everyone to get connected and familiar with the screen they're viewing the presentation on.

Reports and Proposals

1. Reports for monitoring and controlling operations are used to provide feedback and other information to aid in the decision making process.

2. Primary research is research that you gather for a specific new research project; interviews, surveys, and experiments are all types of primary research. Secondary research is research that has already been conducted for another purpose; books, newspapers, magazines, reports, and websites are all types of secondary research.

3. A survey is reliable if it would produce identical results when repeated. A survey is valid if it measures what it is supposed to measure. In order to make it reliable and valid, you should provide clear instructions, only ask information that participants can recall relatively easily, keep the survey short, ask specific questions, avoid ambiguous language, and don't use compound questions.

4. A conclusion is a logical interpretation of facts and other information; it is based solely on information that was provided in the report. On the other hand, a recommendation is a suggestion of what to do with the information contained in the report.

5. Proposal writers use RFPs to adhere to strict guidelines on what should be included in the proposal, including what type of work should be performed, and sticking to budgets, deadlines, and other requirements.

Persuasive Messages

1. In order to gauge the audience's needs while planning a persuasive message, you should ask for specific information about their demographics, psychographics, and their motivation. Also, you should ask what it is you want them to do, how might they resist, are there any alternative positions you need to examine, and what does the audience consider to be the most important issue.

2. Demographics and psychographics help the writer to understand and categorize the audiences needs; they provide information, such as age, gender, personality, income, lifestyle, and attitudes, that can help the writer gear his or her persuasive message to meet the needs of the audience.

3. Emotional appeals are used to call on audience's feelings and make them feel a certain way so they are more likely to accept your message. On the other hand, logical appeals are based on the audience's notion of reason.

4. The three types of reasoning in logical appeals are analogy, induction, and deduction.

5. The AIDA model is a common model of persuasion that mainly uses the indirect approach; it grabs the audiences attention, provides additional details to keep their interest, makes them desire your idea, and calls for a specific action. Its limitations are it is unidirectional meaning it talks at the audience and not with them, and it is built around a single event rather than used for building a long term relationship.

Chaper 8 Questions

1. The five main goals in delivering bad news are to convey the news, to gain acceptance for it, to maintain as much goodwill as possible with your audience, to maintain a good image for you organization, and to reduce or eliminate the need for future correspondence.

2. When choosing between the direct and indirect approaches, you should ask yourself...

1. Will the news come as a shock to your audience?

2. Does the reader prefer messages that are short and get right to the point?

3. How important is the bad news to the reader?

4. Do you need to maintain a close working relationship with the reader?

5. Do you need to get the reader's attention?

6. What communication style does your organization prefer?

3. The sequence of elements in a negative message organized using the indirect approach is opening with a buffer, then providing reasons and additional information that signal the coming negative news, then providing a clear statement of the bad news, and finally closing on a positive note by building goodwill, offering a suggestion for action, or providing a look towards the future.

4. A buffer is a neutral statement that is related to the point of the message. Some people consider it to be unethical because it may be insincere, deceptive, divert attention away from the problem, or lead your reader to think there is good news coming.

5. When using the indirect approach to deliver bad news, you present your reasons before explaining the decision itself because it will help prepare and lead your reader to your decision before you actually come out and say it. Your reader will be able to follow your line of reasoning and their focus will stay on the main issue. Also, providing reasons first helps to defuse any negative emotions that may come with the bad news.

Routine and Positive Messages

1. Analyze This Message

Dear Customer Service Representative,

Our Board of Trustees recently decided to close the dining hall on our campus, so we are currently trying to find ways to help our students prepare meals in their dorm room. I recently saw an ad in Collegiate Magazine for your company, and I was hoping that you could send me some information about your services and answer the following questions.

1. Would you be able to ship the microwaves by August 15th?

2. Do the microwaves have any kind of a warranty?

3. How much do the microwaves cost?

4. Do you give discounts on large orders?

5. Is a special outlet required for the microwaves?

6. Are the microwaves easy enough for students to operate? If not, are instructions provided with them?

Your company's microwaves would be used by the majority of students living on our campus every time they prepare food in their rooms, so you would be become well known on campus. I know that this is short notice, but please get back to me as soon as possible, either by phone, email, or a letter.

Thank you.

Cheryl Vanzo

Clemson University

105 Sumter Lane, Apt L

Central, SC 29630

201-835-3856

cvanzo@clemson.edu

9. Revising a Letter: Vacation Planning

5493 Beechwood Drive

Trenton, NJ 08608

April 12, 2009

Florida Resort Bureau

1555 Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard

West Palm Beach, FL 33401

Dear Sir,

My wife and I are planning to take a vacation in late September with our two daughters, and your advertisement in the April 2009 issue of Smithsonian caught my eye. I was hoping that you could send me some brochures in the mail and answer a few questions about your resorts.

1. Which resorts are located near large cities?

2. Which resorts can be reached by public transportation?

3. Which resorts have attractions geared towards teenagers?

4. Do the off-season rates include all amenities?

5. What is the weather like in Florida during September?

6. Who can we contact for information about concerts taking place during our vacation?

We are hoping to find a resort that is near the beach, a golf course, family friendly night entertainment, and is accessible by public transportation, so please send brochures accordingly. I would appreciate it if you could send this information within the next two weeks so we can book our trip and take time off from work accordingly.

Thank you.

Frank C. Atlas

Email Assignment

Revising Email Messages and Email Etiquette

To: sarah@work.net

From: bill@work.net

Cc: jim@work.net

Subject: Funds for a Training Trip

Hi Sara,

I am looking to go on a training trip, and I was hoping to receive money from the company to help pay for it. Do you know who is responsible for providing the funding?

Please get back to me as soon as possible if you know who I can ask about this matter. Thanks for your help.

Bill

Tone and Flaming

When sending an email, you should always maintain a polite, business tone. This company will not tolerate employees who attack, yell at, or insult customers or their colleagues through emails. If you are upset about a situation, do not send an email right away; to avoid sending an email while you are emotional, either take a walk, work on another project, or draft an email and revise it after you have calmed down. Also, emails that contain discriminatory jokes or may be offensive to others should not be sent. Finally, do not send an email to a fellow colleague that spreads rumors about or "puts down" others. Not only does the company consider emails like this to be unacceptable and a waste of working time, there is a chance that it will come back to harm you since you cannot control who an email gets forwarded to.

Attachments

When sending an email that contains attachments, please be considerate of the recipient. Keep in mind that the recipient may be working on a slower operating system, which means it would take them too long to download and open a big file. Also, please remember that not all programs are compatible on other computers, so send attachments as pdfs or files that are compatible with most other operating systems. If it is necessary to send an attachment with your email, please send as few as possible and only ones that are imperative; there is no need to send five attachments in one email, because it will take the recipient too long to download and open each one. When sending images in email attachments, please reduce the size of the picture so the file is smaller. Finally, remember not to send any attachments that may invade the confidentiality or privacy of this company, or its employees or customers.

Formatting

When drafting an email, please keep in mind that your email not only represents your work, but also this company. Please use a proper business format, so you and the company will maintain a professional reputation; an easy way to accomplish this would be to use the company's email template. Please include a proper header as well as a signature in all emails that you send. When sending an email, please do not include a long list of recipients in the To or Cc lines; instead, use a mailing list in order to make the email look more professional. Keep all of your emails short and to the point, and make sure that all emails are business related.

References

1. CNN.com:

2. Software Reference:

3. Telegraph.co.uk: