Business and Professional Communication Quarterly

Sales letters are one type of persuasive letter often assigned in the business communication classroom. This article dis cusses three approaches that require the student to either taste a product, try out an item, or touch an object before writing the sales letter to a prospective audience. The article describes pre-assignment activities, the assignment, and student reaction to the activities. Samples of handouts and student work are included.

In this potentially controversial article, the author expresses grave concerns about Grammatik 5 for Win dows, both as a teaching tool and as a subtle means of propagating a political perspective. His objections to the software are on four grounds: lexicological, grammatical, structural, and political. The software presents users with feedback that is often wrong, frequently confusing, and sometimes irrelevant. Of particular interest is his discov ery that Grammatik 5 has been programmed to encourage "political correctness."

The responsibility for teaching students to research compa nies often falls to business communication instructors. While textbooks provide useful information related to company research, some instructors may need more detailed assistance in guiding their students' first efforts in researching compa nies. This article provides a step-by-step guide for research ing public and private companies. A sample assignment provides a context for practicing the research skills.

Most introductory-level business writing texts fail to carry page design challenges beyond the chapter that outlines fundamentals. Clearly, if business writing instructors wish to help their students improve as designers, they must go beyond what textbooks offer. They must challenge their students repeatedly throughout the course. Three design challenges that are meant to be presented to stu dents over an eight-to-ten-week period are described.

Case studies, used extensively in business communication classes, offer an advantage by presenting students with real-life situations to which they can respond using writ ten business genres. Cases, however, limited by their cryp tic and condensed nature, may not fully communicate the context of the event. Understanding context has become increasingly important as issues of race, gender, and mul ticultual communication have emerged in the workplace. The double-message approach offers a solution by asking students to write a context memorandum along with their response to the case protagonist.

Group Decision Support Systems are helping many orga nizations to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of group meetings. In addition, multilingual Group Decision Support Systems can support groups using many differ ent languages by automatically translating group mem bers' comments. In this paper, we describe this new technology and demonstrate how it can enhance business communication.

Since many business students will conduct performance appraisals in future employment, instruction on performance appraisals is appropriate for the business communication course. This article contains a discussion of a unit on perfor mance appraisals, including writing comments to support ratings, drawing conclusions concerning performance, and making recommendations to improve performance. An exam ple of an assignment that requires students to complete an appraisal form is provided. Last, suggested teaching tech niques are given for the appraisal unit.