EBUS N140 (Syllabus)

Course Introduction

English for Business Writing (EBUS N140) focuses on effective written communication in business letters, e-mail, memos, and faxes. It also includes practice in writing resumes and cover letters. In addition to learning about the format and conventions of various types of business communication, you will learn how to express essential language functions that provide the basis for written business communication.

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Course Objectives

These are the specific goals of English for Business Writing:

• Unit 1
  • use correct format, salutations, and closings in business letters
• Unit 2
  • write the most common kinds of business letters
• Unit 3
  • write about problems
  • respond to common business letters
• Unit 4
  • use E-mail effectively
  • write messages to make suggestions, state opinions, and disagree tactfully
• Unit 5
  • use faxes effectively
  • make and confirm arrangements, include lists, and express thanks and appreciation
• Unit 6(optional)
• write a resume and cover letter that you would need to apply for a job
• write a follow-up letter
• Unit 7
  • write effective memos
  • refer to data and describe changes and contrasts in data
• Unit 8
  • express relationships of cause, result and contrast
  • outline options, outcomes, and recommendations

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Materials

All course materials are presented on the Internet. You must have e-mail and Internet access through Netscape 4.0 or Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher to do these courses. You also must be able to upload and download attachments in your e-mail system.

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Instructor

Your instructor is an experienced English Language professional at the University of Washington, and will be available to answer your questions and check your work via email.

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Course Length

English for Business Writing is a ten-week online course (9 weeks in Summer Quarter) offered via the Internet. It constitutes 50 contact hours of instruction. It should take you about 80 hours to complete the 7 units and the final writing project.

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Course Activities and Assignments

You will do the following in this course:

1. Work through online interactive exercises to practice writing, style, and editing techniques.
2. Submit and revise short writing assignments sent via e-mail to the instructor.

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Evaluation

English for Business Writing is not a credit course, but it is a graded course. If you pass the course, you will receive five Continuing Education Units (CEUs). In order to pass, you must successfully complete at least 80% of the course work.

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Advice

A major challenge in distance learning courses is the lack of a regular class session. It is easy to get behind without a class meeting each day. For this reason, it's a good idea to set aside a time each day to log on and work on the course. From the beginning, establish a dialogue with your instructor via email. Ask questions about sentences that you don't understand. Think of this dialogue as your opportunity to have more personalized help with your English than a regular class would provide.

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Academic Honesty

Students enrolled in University of Washington Distance Learning courses are expected to observe the same code of academic honesty required of other University of Washington students. Violation of this code can result in academic penalties, such as receiving a failing grade in the course and other disciplinary actions. Academic dishonesty includes, but is not limited to, cheating on examinations and plagiarism, the latter meaning offering the language or ideas of someone else as one's own. Plagiarism may range from failure to credit isolated formulas, sentences, paragraphs, or ideas to entire articles copied from books, periodicals, speeches, or the writings of other students.

Situations involving academic misconduct for noncredit courses will be reviewed by a UW Educational Outreach Committee on Academic Conduct. This committee is composed of advisory board members for the certificate program in which the student is enrolled. If evidence of academic misconduct is established, students will be given a failing grade for the course and any refund of tuition fees will be denied.

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Course Schedule

The exercises in bold are those that you must type in a response box while you are in UW Online and send to your instructor. To receive credit for these exercises you should

• send them in by the due date, in ascending numerical order
• successfully complete them
• send in any necessary revisions within one week from when you receive your instructor's feedback

NOTE: It is a good idea to keep a copy of your work in case there are technical problems. To keep a copy, you can (1) print a copy when you type your response in UW Online, or (2) save your work in a word processing program and then copy and paste into the UW Online response box.

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