Class notes
MANCOSA Business Communication OSA revision
- Course
- Business Communication
- Institution
- Management College Of Southern Africa (MANCOSA)
Answers to a past OSA papers .Hope it helps
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Note to students: Kindy note the KCQs, and longer questions are a form of reference and practice for assignments andexams. The answers are incomplete and is not a memorandum. The questions and answers aim to provide structure on
how to answer longer and shorter questions, your own content and examples should be provided. Copying and pasting
the answers and examples verbatim from the document constitutes a form of plagiarism.
Bad Writing Costs Businesses Billions
Think about it. You start your day wading through first-draft emails from colleagues who fail to come to the point. You
consume reports that do not make clear what is happening or what your management should do about it. The websites,
marketing materials, and press releases from your suppliers are filled with jargon and meaningless superlatives. Poor
writing creates a drag on everything you do. It functions like a tax, sapping your profits. It is imperative that in everything
you write, treat the reader’s time as more valuable than your own. To embrace it means that every time you send an
email or write a document, you must take a moment to structure it for maximum readability and meaning. It is also
necessary to recognise that everybody reads on a screen now—either a smartphone or a computer screen. That
reduces attention spans and concentration, which in turn demands a radical rethink of the way you communicate in
writing. In this environment, brevity must become a core value. Regardless of what you write, the title or subject line and
the first two sentences must carry the payload.
People use jargon to impress other people—but for each person you impress, many others are just confused. Clear,
plain language communicates better, is easier to consume, and is more likely to get its point across to more people.
Along with clarity, brevity, and plain language, a disciplined and coherent review process goes a long way toward
improving the quality of the documents we are struggling to get meaning from. Embracing clear, pointed, and direct
writing is important and we should all commit to that.
Source: Adopted from https://www.thedailybeast.com/bad-writing-costs-businesses-billions )
QUESTION 1 (25 Marks)
According to the extract, for very time an email or document is being written, a moment should be taken to structure it
for maximum readability and meaning. As the marketing manager of Healthy Lifestyle Fitness centre, craft a persuasive
message using the AIDA model to encourage people to patronise the centre. The centre provides services such as
spinning classes, yoga, martial arts, dance routines, cardiovascular exercises weight training and swimming.
, When framing a persuasive argument, effective businesspeople use the AIDA model. Students should craft their
message using the AIDA elements of Attention (A), Interest (I), Desire (D) and Action (A). Below is a breakdown of
what is expected for each criteria. The students should show application of the AIDA principle in their work. Use the
information below to guide your marking and mark for relevance and appropriateness.
Attention (6 marks)
Attention – The first objective is to encourage people to want to hear about the services provided by the fitness centre.
A common ground should be established on which to build a case.
• ATTENTION can be grabbed by opening with the following:
o The product’s strongest feature or benefit
o o A strong, evocative image
o o A piece of genuine news
o A point of common ground with the audience
o o A personal appeal to the reader’s emotions and values o The
promise of insider information
o o The promise of savings
o o A solution to a problem
Interest (6 marks)
Interest - Provide additional details that prompt audience members to imagine how the services provided might benefit
them. INTEREST can be built by highlighting the services central selling point, the single point around which the
message is built. It should comprise support for claims or promises made in the attention section
Desire (6 marks)
Desire - Help audience members embrace the idea by explaining how the service provided by the fitness centre will
benefit them and answer potential objections. The audience’s DESIRE can be intensified by focusing on the audience,
by highlighting important benefits and by using action terms and colourful verbs and adjectives.
Action (6 marks)
Action – Suggestion of specific action for the audience to take. Include a deadline, if applicable. Encouraging specific
ACTION can be done through citing statistics from feedback/research of the product’s performance and including
guarantees of exchange or return privileges A clear explanation of how to take the next step should be included, so
that the audience is persuaded to take action right away. Audience’s response can be boosted by adding a postscript
that reiterates the primary benefit and makes an additional offer.
1 mark for logical flow of work.
The following provides a sample of a persuasive message using the AIDA model:
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