Javier, Jean Chel P.Soriano, Edjohn

STAGES IN BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONBusiness Communication is an important ingredient for success because written communication is used in all areas of business operations. Well-written business communication conveys expertise, professionalism, and competence. Therefore, whether the communication is for an external or internal audience, it is worth the time and effort to write skillfully. What makes business writing effective? To be effective, business writing should be clear, concise, and credible. Clear writing is easy to understand. Concise writing contains only the details that are pertinent to the purpose and topic of the communication. Credible writing is true, realistic, and free of puffery. So now, we are going to discuss the five stages of Business Communication.STAGE 1- PREWRITINGPlanning is the key to effective business writing. Planning your writing will help you organize your thoughts, shape your ideas, and develop the purpose of your material. Because planning enables you to write more efficiently, it will save you time and frustration. The first step is to simply get your thoughts on paper. The next step is to decide on a method for organizing your thoughts such as chronologically or by order of importance. It is very difficult and even futile to try and think about WHAT you want to write and HOW you want to phrase it in the same time. In planning, you try to foresee what you want your final text to look like, using the following points:

Define your writing topic and content area. Narrow your topic down to a specific angle that will be developed in your text. Make sure you are aware of any specific content or technical requirements you may have from teachers. Research and analyze information sources if needed.

Calculate the time needed to complete your writing task. Remember that even a 1,500 word college essay may take a few days to properly complete, so do not postpone writing assignments to the last minute!

Brainstorm and jot down any ideas, thoughts, arguments, words, and phrases you think are relevant to your text.

Organize your preliminary arguments into an outline following a logical order that would suit the general essay structure of opening, body, and ending. Put ideas in sub-groups that will later develop into paragraphs.

STAGE 2- GATHERING AND COLLECTING FACTSInformation gatheringrefers to gathering information about the issue youre facing and the ways other organizations and communities have addressed it.The more information you have about the issue itself and the ways it has been approached, the more likely you are to be able to devise an effective program or intervention of your own.There are obviously many sources of information, and they vary depending on what youre looking for. In general, you can consult existing sources or look at natural examples, examples of actual programs and interventions that have addressed the issue.Well touch on where to find both here, and then go into more detail about them later in the section. Existing sources.This term refers to published material of various kinds that might shed light either on the issue or on attempts to deal with it. These can be conveniently divided into scholarly publications, aimed primarily at researchers and the academic community; mass-market sources, written in a popular style and aimed at the general public; and statistical and demographic information published by various research organizations and government agencies. Natural examples. These are programs or interventions developed and tried in communities that have addressed your issue. Studying them can tell you what worked for them and what didnt, and why.By giving you insight into how issues play out in your or other communities, they can provide nuts-and-bolts ideas about how to (or how not to) conduct a successful program or intervention. For the most part, information sources here are the people who are involved in efforts to address issues similar to yours, or those who can steer you to them. Additionally, there are a number of natural examples (such as single case studies) that have been written about descriptively in the literature of community psychology or public health that may be relevant to your work.

STAGE 3- ANALYZING AND ORGANIZING INFORMATIONAnalyzing information involves examining it in ways that reveal the relationships, patterns, trends, etc. that can be found within it. That may mean subjecting it to statistical operations that can tell you not only what kinds of relationships seem to exist among variables, but also to what level you can trust the answers you are getting. It may mean comparing your information to that from other groups (a control or comparison group, statewide figures, etc.), to help draw some conclusions from the data. The point, in terms of your evaluation, is to get an accurate assessment in order to better understand your work and its effects on those you are concerned with, or in order to better understand the overall situation.The timing of analysis can be looked at in at least two ways: One is that it is best to analyze your information when you have collected all of it, so you can look at it as a whole. The other is that if you analyze it as you go along, you will be able to adjust your thinking about what information you actually need, and to adjust your program to respond to the information you are getting. Which of these approaches you take depends on your research purposes. If youre more concerned with a summative eSTAGE 4- WRITING THE MESSAGEWith your strategy in place, you are ready to write. Before you begin writing, creating a mental image of your target audience and writing the information as if you were having a conversation with them. You might want to ask yourself the following questions: What information do they need to make an informed decision? How much knowledge do they already have about the topic? What action would I like them to take after reading the information? Your sentences should adhere to proper word order rules, each containing a subject and a predicate. Use a variety of verb tenses correctly and appropriately (simple, progressive, perfect, and perfect-progressive tenses).Be careful with subject-verb agreement issues. Use a variety of language constructions to make your writing more precise and educated (comparative structures, relative clauses, conditional sentences, not too much of the passive voice etc.) Use a dictionary or spell checker when not sure about spelling. Reread your text again for problematic homonyms (there their theyre). Use a variety of punctuation marks accurately and consult a style guide when hesitating between a comma, colon, or semi-colon. Edit for text mechanics: capitalization, numbering, italics, and abbreviations.STAGE 5- REVISING YOUR WORKIt is now time to revise. The revising stage requires critical analysis of your work. It is the time to change things if necessary. For instance, you may need to reorder paragraphs, delete sentences, add more details, or replace some words with others. How can you start this process? Read your work as if you were a member of the target audience. Does the message resonate with you? Does it give you enough information? Does it persuade you to take action? Does it convey an understanding of who you are or what you need? To help with the revising process, ask yourself of the following questions: Do the major pieces of the text belong? (Conciseness) Is the text in the most effective order? (Clarity) Do my sentences and paragraphs add anything of value to my message? (Conciseness) Are there any words and phrases that can be removed? (Clarity) Am I using long words when shorter ones will express the same thought just as well? (Credibility) Does what I have written make sense? (Clarity/Credibility) If I were a member of the target audience, would I read this? (Credibility) It may also be helpful to ask someone else to read your material as others can sometimes see flaws that we cannot see. Add polish to the piece with editing. It can be difficult for us to edit our own material for consistency, grammar, spelling, and punctuation. After all, we wrote it and have probably read it at least a few times. So how can we catch those little mistakes? You know, the ones that are glaring at us, but we still cannot see them. If possible, ask someone else to edit your material. If you cannot recruit an editor, one trick is to set the material aside for at least a day (more if possible). Then you can re-read it with a fresh eye and clear mind.If your time is limited, there is a less time consuming method. It involves reading the paragraphs in reverse order. Reading your work from finish to start may disrupt the flow of your words enough for you to catch some errors. Developing business-writing skills takes time and practice. If you do not write frequently or if writing is not your best skill, it will take practice to become an effective business writer. But in the end you will be able to communicate in writing with style, grace, and expertise.Writing is a process. It involves developing concepts, researching the topic, outlining the material, writing a first draft, revising the draft, and conducting a final edit. The goal of this creative process is to develop written communication that informs, persuades, enlightens, entertains, comforts, or inspires. Regardless of the purpose or intended audience, effective writing produces written communication that gets the desired result. It is active, concise, solid, and accurate. Active writing flows well and touches the reader in some important way. Concise writing is clear and to the point. Solid writing is well organized and credible. Accurate writing has consistency, good grammar, and appropriate punctuation.