Anybody seeking a career in administration, management, secretarial duties, business, government or the professions needs the ability to write good professional business letters, and to be able to use English effectively to achieve their various objectives, give confidence to clients and colleagues, and to give a professional impression to customers and others. This Program teaches how to understand and to use business terms and expressions, and to write effective business letters on a wide variety of topics. Using many specimens it shows how to create letters with the correct wording, grammar, spelling, tone and layout needed to achieve their objectives, and which give confidence in your ability and professionalism to the recipients of those letters.
Course Outline Summary
- Why business letters are written: their objectives, language, special features, layouts and appearance.
- Sentences and paragraph construction, building up and constructing a professional letter.
- Technical terms used in English - their meanings and application.
- Internal and external communications, vertical and horizontal communications.
- Letters to employees; congratulations, warnings, meetings, memoranda.
- English used in business letters, acceptable abbreviations.
- Increasing vocabulary, improving English and writing style.
- Personal, private and professional letters - similarities and differences in content and preparation.
- Spellings, dictionaries, conjunctions, thesaurus; verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, punctuation.
- Letters concerning recruitment, employment, promotion and work-related matters; advertisements, CVs, transfers, recommendations, memos, letters of appointment and rejection, references.
- Sales letters: first approach letters, responses, follow-up sales letters, customer retention.
- Preparing circulars, sales literature/promotion, order confirmations.
- The five stages leading to a sales transaction, the buying motives of consumers; relevance when writing letters.
- Letters concerning enquiries, quotations, estimates, tenders, orders, acknowledgements, proformas.
- Letters making complaints, letters responding to complaints received; settlements, agreements, continuity.
- Letters dealing with accounts matters: credit notes, invoices, statements, warning letters, credit and trade references; financial terms and expressions.
- Letters to and from central and local government departments, lawyers, educationists, institutions, banks, estate agents, professionals and others.
- Word processing, computers, email.
- References, copies, files, information and data, filing systems.
