Business Correspondence Critique #Post 3

The following is an email which I have chosen to critique on.
From: XX
Sent: Sunday, January 15, 2009 1:59 AM
To: Jeremy Tan
Subject: AAA Volunteer Recruitment

Dear Jeremy,
As mentioned in our conversation yesterday, we are able to set up a booth to recruit volunteers for AAA during our upcoming bazaar.

The brief proposal would be as follow:
1) we are going to give out leaflets and brochures on the ASPIRE camp and BADGE scheme which are organized by AAA.
2) each and every interested person may sign up as a volunteer of AAA and his/hers contact details will be recorded.
3) In addition, we will have a poster about AAA

Regards,
XX
President of NUS AAA

This was an email which I have received last month. It was send by XX to Mr. Jeremy Tan; the Head of Volunteer Management of AAA headquarter. NUS AAA is going to help AAA headquarter to recruit volunteer during the upcoming bazaar. After reading, I realized that there were some mistakes which should be avoided during writing.

The first error is lack of courtesy which is very important to improve the reader’s impression of the writer. For instance, the writer should address the reader as ‘Mr. Tan’ instead of ‘Dear Jeremy’. This is a common mistake and should be avoided. The inappropriate wording may cause misunderstandings and confusion between the reader and the writer.

The second error is lack of clarity which tells reader exactly what he/she needs to know after just one reading. The writer should include the details about the bazaar such as the date, time and location for the information of the reader.

Another mistakes found was the lack of conciseness. Necessary words and sentences help reader to have a better understanding while wordy expressions and redundancies tend to cause reader to lose concentration. For example, ‘each and every interested person may sign up as a volunteer of AAA and his/hers contact details will be recorded ’, it should be’ each interested person may sign up as a volunteer of AAA and his/hers contact details will be recorded’.

Next, I noticed that there is also the lack of completeness, which can be found in point three. The writer only mentioned that there is a poster about AAA. The writer should include adequate information regarding the poster. When the writer failed to provide adequate information, the reader may get the impression that he/she is not very important to the writer.

In the process of effective writing, 7Cs (Courtesy, Correctness, Conciseness, Clarity, Coherence & Cohesion, Concreteness and Completeness) should be adopted. Furthermore, it should be implemented by revise, edit and proofread.

Resolving Interpersonal Conflict Post#2

Interpersonal conflict is defined as a situation in which one or both persons in a relationship are experiencing disagreement or collision in working or living with each other. At this point, we can decide whether to confront the conflict directly or to ignore its existence by suppressing it. However, conflict is not necessarily being destructive as the process of recognizing conflict usually strengthens relationships.
Below is an example of an interpersonal conflict that happened between Estee and Ann.

Estee and Ann are friends since high school and three months ago both of them have enter the same University. During high school, Estee is a very active student in sport and music while Ann is a very clever but passive girl. Due to her character, Estee is always surrounded by a big group of friends. However, as Ann is the only friend who enters the same University as her, Estee began to pay more attention at Ann. Estee will ask Ann out for meal whenever she is free and try to introduce her new friends to Ann as she wants to broaden Ann’s social circle. However, Ann seems to be very cold and not interested with her ideas. Even if both of them are having lunch with other friends, Ann acts very weird and she don’t even have the courtesy to wait for others to begin the meal. All her friends commented on Ann’s behavior as she is getting more passive and always alone by herself. As Estee is Ann’s only close friend in this foreign land, Estee thinks that she has the responsible to help Ann to adapt to the University life better. Sadly, Estee has no idea how to bring up this topic to Ann as she afraid that it will eventually hurt Ann and affects their friendship.

In this context, what are the feasible solutions for solving the interpersonal conflict between Estee and Ann?