Introduction
Besides advertisements, companies do leverage on other written publications to maintain their customer base as well as attract potential customers.
Customers can be internal (own employees) or external (people who will buy the company’s products or services. Providing updates and helpful content to these customers will enable them to know the company and its products/services better. This familiarity might then translate into customer loyalty.
Often, the task of writing content falls on the marketing communications or corporate communications personnel who double up as writers. They need to write informative pieces, giving advice or “how to” tips. They need to write analytical or persuasive commentaries to sway their readers to a course of action, a change of mindset or simply to accept something as a fact.
This course will focus on the whole writing process, from brainstorming ideas, planning the outline, writing a draft to revising and proofreading the final draft. Participants will also be introduced to the different writing styles for the different genres of feature writing, information pieces and analysis/commentaries.
Benefits/ Learning Outcomes
Understand the differences between the different writing styles - instructional, informative, descriptive, analytical and persuasive.
Deploy the different styles to fit the purpose of the article.
Learn how to do pre-writing planning including crafting an outline
Organise ideas in different ways according to chronology, spatial aspects, importance, or general/specific
Pick up tips on how to revise to get rid of clichés, redundant phrases and monotonous writing
Be aware of the importance of the collation of words and word choice
Apply proofreading strategies to correct typos and grammatical errors
Course Content
Course Outline
Day 1
1. The writing process: Macro to mirco
2. Pre-writing: Thinking about Subject, Audience, Purpose
3. Different writing styles: instructional, informative, descriptive, analytical and persuasive
4. Pre-writing: What is your main idea?
5. Pre-writing: Planning an outline
6. Writing skill: achieving chronological order and phrasing instructions
7. Writing: Instructional / “how to” articles
8. Writing skill: top-down approach, showcasing “what’s in it for me” aspects for the reader
9. Writing: Informative / descriptive press releases
10. Be Simple, Be Brief: respecting the word limit
11. Titling your articles
Day 2
Writing Skill: Be specific and concrete, be concise, be creative
Writing Skill: Parts of speech, word choice, word collation
Writing Skill: Organising ideas spatially; chunking information
Writing: Feature articles
Writing: Blog and Facebook posts
Writing Skill: rhetorical balance – logos, pathos and ethos
Writing Skill: avoiding fallacies
Writing Skill: persuading on fact, value and action
Writing: Persuasive articles
Post-writing: Editing for structure and organisation
Post-writing: Revising for language – sentence structure, fragments and Subject-Verb Agreement
Post-writing: Proofreading for grammar, spelling and typos
Trainer's Profile
Gael Lee conducts training in communications skills for tertiary students and working adults. A book editor and copywriter by profession, Gael has worked in the book publishing industry for a decade before setting up her own copywriting/training business. Her clients range from public service agencies and banks to interior design companies.
Gael holds a Master of Arts Degree (Language Studies) awarded by the National University of Singapore. She lectures part-time on various Business Communication subjects at tertiary institutions.
As a copywriter, Gael has written features articles, informative texts and analytical content for both print and web platforms for a number of organizations. A corporate trainer specialising in written communications, Gael has conducted several workshops including E-mail Writing, Writing for Social Media, Writing for the Web and Copywriting.
