Correspondence

Reflection

For the first assignment, I learned how to effectively construct professional correspondence letters, specifically a Bad News Letter and a Persuasive letter. For both letters, I applied Course Learning Outcomes one, two, three, and four. I analyzed examples of each type of letter I was creating. Doing so allowed me to better understand the genre of professional writing and how it should be perceived by the intended audience. Specifically, these letters gave me experience with business letters.

This course taught me how to write professional, business-style documents versus academic. This taught me the importance of using the Eight C’s, meaning the need to be clear, concise, concrete and specific, complete, courteous, coherent, constructive, and correct in my writing. The helped me to ensure that the audience would have no trouble understanding my correspondence and the information I intended to get across. Following these rules made sure the letters, specifically the Bad News Letter, would be received in a polite, non-aggressive or critical manner. Using plain English also helped my message to sound direct and eliminate redundancy.

I did conduct some research in order to decide on the content of my letters because it was coming from an imaginative scenario. Researching other examples allowed me to have a stronger and clearer voice for my letters. Lastly, a very important factor in conducting these letters was learning how to format the layouts. After learning the block letter format, my letters had the professional first impression that is used in the business world.

Bad News Letter Document