6 Tips when Writing for a Global Audience

6 Tips when Writing for a Global Audience As businesses become more international, so must our writing. Fortunately, good business writing skills transfer very well to global audiences. Here are a few helpful tips for writing for a global audience: 1) Avoid academic or technical writing styles Academic and technical writing styles are very information dense. The sentences are long, they contain a lot of information, and there is often technical language that may be hard for the average person to understand. Compare an article from your local newspaper to an academic journal article or a technical manual to see the difference. To effectively reach your global audience, write in a more straightforward style. The next few tips are good examples of how to do this. 2) Use lists Numbered or bulleted lists are much easier to understand and respond to than paragraphs. Whenever possible, put information in a list. Anchor each item with strong, clear vocabulary to get your point across 3) Choose the right words Did you know that for every native speaker of English, there are (almost) two non-native speakers? I find this statistic incredible – approximately 2/3 of the people who speak English learned it as a second language! Of course, English varies widely depending on where it is being spoken, so you want to choose words that are internationally recognized. For example: Strange is more commonly recognized worldwide than the very American weird. Friend is used more widely than synonyms like pal, chap, mate, etc. Change your money is far more common than to get change, to break a dollar/20, to cash a check. The best way to figure this out is to listen to the way English is used in different places. Another good practice is to think about the words you use and whether they have a more specific synonym. Which leads us to†¦ 4) Be as specific as possible Choose words, particularly verbs, that mean exactly what you want them to mean. A good of example of why this is important is phrasal verbs (verb + preposition = a different meaning). For example: Blow up vs. Explode. These two mean the same thing, but a non-native speaker will often read blow up literally, and imagine someone blowing air up. So, a sentence like â€Å"The stock price is going to blow up!† might be completely nonsensical. Explode is a much better choice. Run into vs. Meet unexpectedly Again, these two mean the same thing, but run into could be taken literally. So, it would be better to say, â€Å"I met John unexpectedly at the restaurant last night.† Instead of â€Å"I ran into John at the restaurant last night.† It may seem like a small difference, but in the context of a longer conversation, it could be quite confusing! Talk into vs. Convince. Here, the into is what’s confusing. Into usually connotes a spatial change, but talk into involves a change of opinion. Convince is a much clearer choice. For example, â€Å"We have to convince them to lower their price.† 5) Choose the right grammatical structures I have previously written about business writing grammar, but the general idea is that you want to use easy to understand grammatical structures: present, past, and future simple tenses. These are the first tenses you learn in a foreign language, so they are fairly widely understood. Similarly, do not rely on grammar to explain time relationships. Instead, use adverbs, such as first, next, last, to do this job. Like listing, these adverbs are additional cues that help your reader understand what needs to be done. 6) Do not make assumptions This is the hardest tip to put into practice because we all have a set of cultural assumptions. I will share an example from my experiences to help clarify what this means: I am an American professor at an American university. As such, I expect my assignment instructions to be followed. I work with international and immigrant students, so I always give very explicit instructions. Semester after semester, I was getting a handful of papers that blatantly ignored those detailed and painstakingly crafted instructions. I finally talked to some other teachers who had taught abroad and asked them what I was missing. Apparently, there are some places where you are expected to do something other than what the instructions specify. This was a total light bulb moment for me. I am now very clear about the fact that my instructions are EXACTLY what I expect in the final papers and that my students should not deviate from them. Simply stating this has helped tremendously (both in the students’ work and in my frustration levels). My expectations in the above scenario were actually culturally based assumptions – I mean, the teacher tells you what she wants, and you do that, right? Not always! We all have cultural assumptions about many things – time, money, relationships, work schedules, vacation, meetings, etc. – and it is hard to see beyond them sometimes. If you enjoyed these 6 tips make sure to check out our complete list of 87 business writing tips. As you can see, the items above are all elements of good business writing, but they are particularly important with global audiences. Short, clear, direct sentences help your reader to respond in a timely manner. Instructional Solutions offers business writing courses that can help you to achieve this type of writing.

Qualitative Research Definition and Methods

Qualitative Research Definition and Methods Qualitative research is a type of social science research that collects and works with non-numerical data and that seeks to interpret meaning from these data that help us understand social life through the study of targeted populations or places. People often frame it in opposition to quantitative research, which uses numerical data to identify large-scale trends and employs statistical operations to determine causal and correlative relationships between variables. Within sociology, qualitative research is typically focused on the micro-level of social interaction that composes everyday life, whereas quantitative research typically focuses on macro-level trends and phenomena. Methods of qualitative research include  observation and immersion, interviews, open-ended surveys, focus groups, content analysis of visual and textual materials, and oral history.   The Purpose of Qualitative Research Qualitative research has a long history in sociology and has been used within it for as long as the field itself has existed. This type of research has long appealed to social scientists because it allows the research to investigate the meanings that people attribute to their behavior, actions, and interactions with others. While quantitative research is useful for identifying relationships between variables, like, for example, the connection between poverty and racial hate, it is qualitative research that can illuminate why this connection exists by going directly to the source the people themselves. Qualitative research is designed to reveal the meaning that informs the action or outcomes that are typically measured by quantitative research. So, qualitative researchers investigate  meanings, interpretations, symbols, and the  processes and relations of social life. What this type of research produces is descriptive data that the researcher must then interpret using rigorous and systematic methods of transcribing, coding, and analysis of trends and themes. Because its focus is everyday life and peoples experiences, qualitative research lends itself well to creating new theories using the inductive method, which can then be tested with further research. Methods of Qualitative Research Qualitative researchers  use their own eyes, ears, and intelligence to collect in-depth perceptions and descriptions of targeted populations, places, and events. Their findings are collected through a variety of methods, and often, a researcher will use at least two or several of the following while conducting a qualitative study. Direct observation:  With direct observation, a researcher studies people as they go about their daily lives without participating or interfering. This type of research is often unknown to those under study, and as such, must be conducted in public settings where people do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. For example, a researcher might observe the ways in which strangers interact in public as they gather to watch a street performer.Open-ended surveys: While many surveys are designed to generate quantitative data, many are also designed with open-ended questions that allow for the generation and analysis of qualitative data. For example, a survey might be used to investigate not just which political candidates voters chose, but why they chose them, in their own words.Focus group: In a focus group, a researcher engages a small group of participants in a conversation designed to generate data relevant to the research question. Focus groups can contain anywhere from 5 to 15 participants. Social scientists often use them  in studies that examine an event or trend that occurs within a specific community. They are common in market research too. In-depth interviews: Researchers conduct in-depth interviews by speaking with participants in a one-on-one setting. Sometimes a researcher approaches the interview with a predetermined list of questions or topics for discussion but allows the conversation to evolve based on how the participant responds. Other times, the researcher has identified certain topics of interest but does not have a formal guide for the conversation, but allows the participant to guide it.Oral history: The oral history method is used to create a historical account of an event, group, or community, and typically involves a series of in-depth interviews conducted with one or multiple participants over an extended period of time.Participant observation:  This method is similar to observation, however with this one, the researcher also participates in the action or events in order to not only observe others but to gain the first-hand experience in the setting.Ethnographic observation:  Ethnographic observati on is the most intensive and in-depth observational method. Originating in anthropology, with this method, a researcher fully immerses herself into the research setting and lives among the participants as one of them for anywhere from months to years.  By doing this, the researcher attempts to experience day-to-day existence from the viewpoints of those studied in order to develop in-depth and long-term accounts of the community, events, or trends under observation. Content analysis:  This method is used by sociologists to analyze social life by interpreting words and images from documents, film, art, music, and other cultural products and media. The researchers look at how the words and images are used, and the context in which they are used to draw inferences about the underlying culture. In the last decade, content analysis of digital material, especially that generated by social media users, has become a popular technique within the social sciences. While much of the data generated by qualitative research is coded and analyzed using just the researchers eyes and brain, the use of computer software to do these processes is increasingly popular within the social sciences. Pros and Cons of Qualitative Research Qualitative research has both benefits and drawbacks. On the plus side, it creates an in-depth understanding of the attitudes, behaviors, interactions, events, and social processes that comprise everyday life. In doing so, it helps social scientists understand how everyday life is influenced by society-wide things like social structure, social order, and all kinds of social forces. This set of methods also has the benefit of being flexible and easily adaptable to changes in the research environment and can be conducted with minimal cost in many cases. The downsides of qualitative research are that its scope is fairly limited so its findings are not always widely generalizable. Researchers also have to use caution with these methods to ensure that they themselves do not influence the data in ways that significantly change it and that they do not bring undue personal bias to their interpretation of the findings. Fortunately, qualitative researchers receive rigorous training designed to eliminate or reduce these types of research bias.