Do you want to talk to your audience or talk at your audience?
Course Objectives
By successfully completing this course, the target learners will be able to demonstrate knowledge
and understanding to:
- Recognise the benefits for adopting clear English techniques for internal & external customers and the organisation.
- Apply clear English methods techniques to their written communication, when writing to internal and external customers.
- Identify the target audience that they are writing to and select an appropriate written tone for the written communication.
- Improve written communication practices within the organisation by using clear English techniques to review the access ability of existing standard letters and other written templates.
What is clear English?
Clear English is more commonly recognised as plain English. Plain English can be defined as “the writing and setting out of essential information in a way that gives a co-operative, motivated person a good chance of understanding the document at first reading, and in the same sense that the writer meant it to be understood” (Ask Oxford).
Why is clear English relevant to housing organisations?
- The Leitch Review (2006), highlights that over five million adults do not have the level of functional literacy required to get by in life and in at work.
- The National Literacy Trust also points out that 20% of people living in the UK have an average reading age of an 11 year old (Jama & Dugdale, 2010,P2).
- The Audit Commission measures the Housing sectors performance when delivering services to the tenants living in their properties.
- In relation to access to services, the Audit Commission asks “Is the information provided to customers easy to read? Was it developed in consultation with customers and does it meet their needs and expectations?” (Audit Commission, 2007, p2)
How is this course structured?
The course takes a blended learning approach, mixing online tutorials with face to face classroom sessions. The clear English course consists of seven modules:
- Planning
- Regular words
- Keep it short
- Active Verbs
- Hidden verbs
- Presentation
- Proofreading
The modules are designed to be learnt online on this wiki and have links to external resources and assessments to test the learners knowledge. The learner is expected to cover all seven modules.
The on-line training is complemented by two classroom sessions:
The first classroom session will be a feedback session for the on-line module assessments and facilitate a discussion on clear English and applying it to internal and external communication. The learning objectives for this session are:
- Recognise the benefits for adopting clear English techniques for internal & external customers and the organisation.
- Apply clear English methods techniques to their written communication, when writing to internal and external customers.
The second classroom session will focus on reviewing existing documents within the organisation. The learning objectives for this session are:
- Improve written communication practices within the organisation by using clear English techniques to review the access ability of existing standard letters and other written templates.
