Writing Skills

Purpose

This series of exercises help the delegates to practice writing by observing and improving a variety of different sources. The list is intended as a starting point so you can get ideas about potential exercises. You can extend this list by thinking of many other ideas.

Objective

Carry out exercises on writing skills based on given sources and practice them to perfection.

What You Need

• Paper and subject material

Setup

• The following exercise can be given to individuals or groups. You can also give these exercises before the course, so delegates have more time to prepare something and bring it to the training session where you can provide feedback.
• Examples of writing exercises are as follows:
  • Provide a badly written report and ask delegates to rewrite it.
  • Provide a badly written email and ask delegates to rewrite it.
  • Provide 20 badly written sentences and ask the delegates to improve them.
  • Provide a badly composed advertisement focusing on verbal content and ask the delegates to improve it.
  • Ask the delegates to bring an example of a bad speech to the course and ask them to rewrite it based on what they learned in the course.
  • Ask delegates to bring a badly written 2-page report to the course and get them to rewrite it during the course based on what you have thought them.
  • Ask the delegates to write a marketing piece for a product that you specify (preferably something relevant to what they do).
  • Ask the delegates to bring an example of a highly biased report to the course and get them to correct and balance the views by rewriting it.
• As you can see, there are many possibilities and depending on your delegates and your objectives you need to select the most appropriate for your courses.

Timing

Explaining the Test: 5 minutes.

Activity: 30 minutes (depends on the particular exercise used)

Group Feedback: 10 minutes.

Discussion

What do you think of the improved report/content? How easy was it to improve it? Could you use a systematic approach that facilitates the process such as using AIDA or similar techniques?