BUSM3320 BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONS

RMIT International University Vietnam, Hanoi Campus

BUSM3320 BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONS Lecturer: Mr. Philip Large

Reflection Paper

Student name: Le Quoc Trung

Student ID: s3192494

September_2010
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RMIT International University Vietnam

BP181 Bachelor of Commerce Program

ASSIGNMENT COVER PAGE

Your submission will not be accepted unless all fields below are completed Course Code: BUSM3320

Course Name: Business Communications Location where you study: Hanoi Campus Title of Assignment: Reflection Paper File(s) submitted BUSM3320_G3_s3192494_Le Quoc
Trung_Reflection Paper

Student name: Le Quoc Trung Student e-mail address: S3192494@rmit.edu.vn Learning Facilitator in charge: Philip Large Assignment due date: 12/09/2010 Date of submission: 12/09/2010 Number of pages including this one: 9 Word Count: 1561 (excluding Cover Page, TOC)

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Acknowledgement
Via my reflection, I sincerely want to thank Mr. Philip Large our learning facilitator for Business Communications course. Throughout this course, he was devoted to supporting us whenever we have difficulties in understanding clearly the lectures, teaching us valuable knowledge and creating interesting activities closely related to real business environment. All of these things are really precious to us when working in multi-national firms in the near future. Especially, I want to thank my colleagues. Without your contribution, I cannot complete all given tasks during this course. The purpose of my reflection is to present what I acquired from Business Communications course a useful business course for students before graduating from university.

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Table of Contents
Acknowledgement ................................. 3 Introduction ........................................... 5 Communication skills ............................. 5 Presentation skills .................................. 6 Writing an effective email ...................... 7 Inter-cultural communication ................ 8 Conclusion .............................................. 8

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Introduction
After 12 weeks participating in Business Communications course, I was really amazed about the amount of knowledge provided. From wearing formal clothes to making a professional presentation, writing an effective email, or using inter-cultural communication skills in the workplace. All of these things support me a lot before entering the real working environment. Honestly, every time coming to the Business Communications class with formal clothes, I felt the difference between me and other students in the university. This is due to the fact that this course encourages students to participate as members of a real company which requires formality and regulations to operate efficiently. Wearing formal clothes not only express my personalities but also make a first great impression on people having communication with me. As a consequence, the companys image will be improved significantly. Moreover, our learning facilitator also tried his best to make the lectures become more interesting through creating activities closely related to communication skills in the workplace. Thus, we had many opportunities to practice and reflect on what we have learnt.

Communication skills
In order to have a clear perception about the important role of communication in many aspects of this life, lets look at some disadvantages of poor communication. Actually, poor communication can affect the cohesiveness between members in the team significantly. Besides, it also has a great impact on making decisions as well as solving problems. I realized that on some first weeks of this course, communicating between members in my team was not effective. A question was raised in my thought: what are the main factors causing this problem? And I discovered that there are 3 main factors having great influence on communication. Firstly, about AGE. Almost members in our team are in the age range of 20 25. It could be considered as an advantage in sharing ideas because we are all young generation. Secondly, about GENDER. We have 4 young boys and 1 girl in our team. We have already known each other from previous semesters. Thus, we do not find any difficulties in developing our group. However, 4 young boys participating in a group also creates a problem. More specifically, sometimes, instead of focusing REFLECTION PAPER Page 5

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on the lectures, we talked about girls in our class or university stuffs. Thirdly, about FUNCTION. Almost members in our team found it is easy to communicate with each other while working in the same department in Star Industries. Identifying factors having great impact on communication assisted me a lot in creating appropriate strategies to enhance communication between members in our team. Firstly, listening to the ideas of members in the team. Listening is not only focusing on what the speaker wants to express but also understanding its meaning in different situations, therefore, listener can give some feedback. Secondly, it is better to use more colorful language than aggressive language. In fact, using colorful language will make team members aware of their responsibility in each given task. In contrast, too much aggressive language could turn regular discussions between team members into arguments. For instance, during the discussion about the appropriate strategies to increase sales volume in South East Asia market, members in our team have their own solutions and they consider their ideas as the best. Thus, we cannot find out which is the right strategy for us. Thirdly, from my point of view, in order to make the communication between team members become more effective, we should respect others ideas and feelings and feel comfortable in giving opinions. Each team member has different perception and feelings about one issue, thus, denying others ideas will make them feel uncomfortable in contributing ideas for the next time. As a consequence, communication barriers in the team will be occurred. In our team, there is only one girl and other members realized that she may feel a little bit shy when sharing her ideas. Thus, we always appreciate her opinions and let her say what she thinks.

Presentation skills
Through courses in RMIT University, I had many opportunities to get acquainted with different kinds of presentations. Once again, my presentation skills were trained, but in a professional way during Business Communications course. In fact, presentation is one of the most efficient methods to transfer ideas quickly to audiences. However, doing a presentation effectively is not easy as I expected. There are some problems I might face when presenting my ideas to colleagues, especially the CEO. One of these problems is about presentation speed. Sometimes, when giving a presentation, I speak a little bit fast. That will make my audiences find it is REFLECTION PAPER Page 6

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difficult to catch up with my ideas. Besides, speaking too fast also makes me feel embarrassed when having mistakes in presenting my ideas. Via the assistance of my colleagues in Sales Department as well as the CEO, I realized my presentation problem. I attempted to slow down my presentation speed along with learning from professional presenters to capture my audiences attention. Actually, doing these things is not easy; however, with the support of everybody in Star Industries and my efforts as well, I believe that I could improve all essential skills, especially presentation skills in the future.

Writing an effective email

To students at semester 6 like me, improving essential skills before entering the real workplace is really important. Writing an effective email is one of these skills. In our daily life, we get used to writing different types of emails such as request email, confirm or reject email, or even normal email discussing about one issue between senders and receivers. However, in fact, not too many people know how to write an effective email. They always have a thought in mind that they just only need to focus on expressing main ideas to target audiences via email. That is not completely correct. After participating in Business Communications course, I have found out that when writing an email, we have to follow the three main steps: planning, writing and completing. For each step, the requirement is totally different. Besides, senders are required to choose the appropriate language for the email to communicate effectively with receivers. For instance, though it is not a good case, sender always needs to use positive way to express the ideas to receiver. This is due to the fact that it makes receiver feel a little bit pleasant when receiving this type of message. Throughout this course, I had a lot of opportunities to practice writing effective emails. I just realized that writing an effective email not only helps me to send my ideas to my colleagues in the same company, more specifically in my department, but also attain their respect. In the case of two members in my department, they were absent from class a lot and not complete their task on time (on time: meet the group deadline). This has a great impact on the performance of the whole team. So I decided to write them a letter with positive language to encourage them come to class more often and submit their work on time. As a result, they changed their attitude and REFLECTION PAPER Page 7

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worked effectively in the rest of this course. Through this memorable experience, I think that writing an effective email is not quite difficult. On the other hand, it will assist me a lot in communicating well with the CEO and colleagues in the real workplace as well in the future.

Inter-cultural communication
With the rapid world development as well as the technology boom occurs on a large scale, this helps many countries all over the world getting closer and co-operating in various fields such as economics, politics, society, etc. This opens great opportunities for domestic business to expand the current market into other foreign countries. However, adapting to a new culture, more specifically, communicating with other people from different cultures is never an easy task to do. Based on what I acquired from the course Business Communications, there are many types of cultural differences such as society, religion, ethics, behavior, etc. These differences mainly occur in multi-national firms in which many types of people from different cultures working together. Like two sides of a coin, inter-cultural communication assists employees a lot in improving inter-personal perception about other cultures, however, it could creates conflicts in making decisions and resolving problems. Having a clear perception about cultural differences will support me a lot when working in the multi-national firm in the future. For instance, almost Eastern people dress formally than Western people or European people like to mention things directly and evaluate others based on real ability. Thus, understanding clearly these differences will increase the communication effectiveness significantly.

Conclusion
To conclude, participating in Business Communications course is really a new experience for me. Throughout this course, I had opportunities to explore other business aspects along with improving essential working skills professionally. Besides, with the support of my colleagues and especially the CEO, I also determined what are my strengths and weakness. In the future, I intend to work in a multi-national company where I have to deal with a variety of issues and be responsible for resolving them. Thus, knowledge and skills provided in Business REFLECTION PAPER Page 8

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Communications course such as writing response email effectively, communicate with different types of people, etc. will assist me a lot while working as well as develop and maintain good relationships with others in the workplace.

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