The birth of READ (READ Academy): Living in Saudi Arabia, the idea came naturally and seems relevant especially in here where English conversations walk a very thin line between “straight up” and “wrecked down” and not to mention the usage of business etiquettes’ at both the individual as well as the institutional level. As a business faculty in Riyadh, majority of my students came to the semester exam with minimal or no reading from the text; ironically down the road, the university had closed the sale of the text books at the book store and so very conveniently for the students to read from the slides. Within a few semester periods, the same student who would be achieving a B’ or C’ grades were asking for an A or an A+; thus, the project to promote READ was born……
Dedicated to a great university professor of mine who did never hesitate to embarrass his students by declining to read their term papers if written in less than perfect English, presenting a one-day workshop for students, teachers and professionals based of “where you may get it wrong when writing English”.
Module One: Getting Started
- Icebreaker
- Housekeeping Items
- The Parking Lot
- Workshop Objectives
Two: Quoting and Paraphrasing
- Introduction: Tools
- Use of punctuation marks
- Grammar points
- Use of tense
- Academic Writing: use of titles, conjunction Quoting and Paraphrasing
Module Three: Quoting
- How to quote: a practical guide
- Quoting text & boundaries
- Orthographic tools used
- Scare Quotes
- Exceptions to the rule
Module Four: Paraphrasing
- How to paraphrase: a practical guide
- Paraphrasing & boundaries
- Orthographic barriers
- Reporting verbs used
- Exercises
Module Five: Subject and Verb agreement
- A practical guide
- Lack of Agreement
- pitfalls in subject – verb agreement
- Examples from mainstream English publications
- Exercises
Module Six: The Possessive
- Use the right possessive form
- Acronyms and abbreviations
- case of joint ownership & inanimate nouns
- Exercises
Module Seven: Abbreviations & Acronyms
- How to define
- Points of grammar and style
- Pre-modifier functions
- Exercises
Module Eight: Punctuations
- Use of right punctuation marks in the right place
- Guide to punctuation marks
- Use of apostrophe, parenthesis, colon, dashes, hyphen and brackets etc.
- Exercises
Module Nine: Consistency
- Importance of consistency for style
- Consistency in the tense of verb
- Consistency in listing
- Consistency in bullet points
- Exercises
Module Ten: The Progressive tense
- Verbs that appear in the progressive
- Pitfalls in the use of progressive tense
- Awkward sentences
- Exercises & examples
Module Eleven: Writing guidelines
- Pronouns: Commonest errors
- Sentences: Types of simple sentences
- Clauses: how to write
- Coherence: how to link sentences & paragraphs
- Transitional words & phrases: summary, similarity, contrast, addition, causality, chronology and exemplification, etc.
- Use of synonyms
- Writing guidelines: Sentence structure, length, ideas per sentence, commas and other punctuations, abbreviations, jargon and other difficult words, quotations, contractions, drawing logical conclusions, redundant structures, use of active verbs, unnecessary infinitive clauses, repetitive wordings, non-sexist words.
- Friendly words: accept/except; adverse/averse; aids/AIDS; aid/aide; allusion/illusion; always/never/all, bad/badly, etc.
Module Twelve: Wrapping Up
- Words from the Wise
- Review of Parking Lot
- Lessons Learned
- Completion of Action Plans and Evaluations
Additional English Communication requirements can be met with our “Business Writing“, “Proposal Writing“ and the newly released ‘Collaborative Business Writing’ workshops. Effective Communication remains an area of interest for READ and the above courses can be combined to further guarantee a sustained competitive advantage for your organization. Our strong belief in soft systems methodology as opposed to the hard systems methodology based on our understanding of systems thinking and its application will enable READ better comprehend the needed communication skills at any learning organization and thereby attaining the cutting-edge advantage.
Additionally, the workshop includes the following:
- Training Manuals for each delegate, Icebreakers, energizers, and other workshop activities to heighten the effectiveness of training sessions when targeted to the lesson topic and the overall needs of the participants.
- PowerPoint slides embedded with videos that will complement the instructor-led training experience and provide an excellent summary of training concepts in point format. Flip chart notes are also available as an alternative for workshop training.
- Quick Reference Sheets. These powerful Quick Reference sheets are an excellent take away from any training program or as a stand-alone desktop reference tool.
- Usage of real life examples, case studies, and stories based on the instructor’s industry experience that are relevant to the group.
- Certificates. The Certificate of Completion is meant to publicly acknowledge the effort and expense invested by participants in the completion of the training workshop.
- Course related MP3 Audio book for training on the go and a complimentary E-book on select Soft Skills.
All of these professional training resources are based on the most up-to-date body of knowledge and carefully selected by subject matter experts. To better comprehend each module’s objectives & outline, please click on the following link that demonstrates the HR’ module on our website: http://readacademy.net/course-curriculum/
To register for the workshop or additional information on a specific module, please respond back with your choice of the pick and/or visit http://readacademy.net/softskills-training-courses/; to enable us meet your business requirements, please fill out the professional enquiry form at: http://readacademy.net/contact-us/. If you have any questions, concerns or need an insight to our soft approach, please contact us at: info@readacademy.net and/or call us +966532874341.