Video: Improving Proposals

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From the course by University of Washington

Business English: Capstone Project

38 ratings

University of Washington

Business English: Capstone Project

38 ratings

Course 5 of 5 in the Specialization Business English Communication Skills

The capstone project will give you opportunities to demonstrate your competence in the learning objectives for this Specialization. For the project, you’ll use formal, written methods and more casual visual and audio methods of communication to demonstrate your ability to use language appropriate for different business contexts. The goal of this course is to demonstrate competence in writing and presenting a plan using skills and language appropriate for business. Course Learning Objectives • Use appropriate vocabulary to write a mini business plan • Communicate a business plan orally in an organized and engaging presentation

From the lesson

Week 5: Being Persuasive

In Week 5, we will review lectures on being persuasive and you will complete a rough raft of your mini business plan.

Video: Organization of Written Proposals7:58

Video: Language of Proposals8:07

Video: Improving Proposals9:01

Meet the Instructors

Richard Moore
Extension Lecturer, International & English Language Programs
UW Educational Outreach

[MUSIC]

When you're writing a proposal,

you want to persuade your reader with strong content.

However, you should also make sure that your proposal is easy to read and

is formatted correctly.

If it isn't,

the strength of your proposal is weakened even if you have a good argument.

Let's take a look at a complete proposal.

You'll read a section of the proposal, and

be asked to think about how it could be changed to make it easier to read.

Then, you'll see how it can be improved.

Read the introduction to a proposal.

How can we make it easier to read?

Is the tone okay?

How could you improve it?

Pause the video if you need more time.

Let's see how we can improve the introduction.

First, I'm going to doesn't sound very professional, so

let's use one of the phrases that we learned to introduce the purpose.

The purpose of this proposal is.

Also, I don't think we need to give the examples of

the flavors in the introduction, so let's delete that.

Finally, the last sentence sounds a little casual.

Let's join it to the previous sentence so it looks like this.

Read the next part of the proposal.

How can we make it easier to read?

Pause the video, if you need more time.

I don't think using, as you know, is a good idea.

It gives the impression that you are not telling the readers anything new and

may be wasting their time.

So, let's start by giving this section a heading background and

let's make it bold so that it stands out.

We can delete as you know and you can see it.

And join these two sentences into one.

Finally, let's join those last two sentences and

simplify it by taking out some unnecessary information.

Read the next part of the proposal.

How can we make it easier to read?

Pause the video if you need more time.

In this section we are going to do several things, including using white space,

to make it easier to read.

Let's start by giving this section a heading, Findings.

We will include a blank line before the heading too.

Next, let's use, I have attached as a simpler way to refer to the results

of the research in another document and to summarize to introduce the summary.

It's hard to see those flavors in the middle of all that text so

let's make two simple lists.

There, it's much easier to see them now.

Notice we used the following when we introduced the list.

Finally, let's make that last sentence into its own paragraph with

white space before and after.

Read the next part of the proposal.

How can we make it easier to read?

Also, do you notice any spelling, punctuation, or grammar mistakes?

What heading can we include here?

Pause the video if you need more time.

Again, let's start by making it easier to read by giving this section the heading

recommendation.

Now instead of listing those four flavors again we can use the word above

to refer to the previous list.

Now it's always a good idea to check your writing for any mistakes.

Did you find any in the last sentence?

Here they are.

We need to capitalize i, and remember, then remember after propose,

we can use the ing form of the verb, not to.

Chocolates is spelled incorrectly, so let's correct that, and finally,

we need a period at the end.

Okay.

This section can have the heading outcomes.

So let's do that.

Now, looking at the rest of it,

the main problem is that each sentence is on a separate line.

So that's easy to fix.

Now there are a couple of phrases that we don't really need.

So that's my suggestion isn't necessary because it's obvious this is a proposal.

Also thanks for reading is not very professional so let's delete that too.

And let me know what you think also sounds a little informal so

let's just keep the sentence.

I would be happy to discuss this with your further and

answer any questions so please let me know.

As the tone of the proposal is a little more formal, we can take out that I

look forward to hearing from you soon at the end, and just finish with the name.

So let's recap.

To make a proposal easier to read, be concise.

Don't include unnecessary information.

Make sure the tone is appropriate.

Being a little more formal and profession is often a good idea.

Use headings and white space to divide sections of the report and

use lists to make it easier to see important information.

Don't write all the sentences on separate lines

because in English people tend to read in paragraphs.

But, you can have one sentence in it's own paragraph to make it stand out or

if there is only one sentence in that section of the proposal.

Finally, check your writing for grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors.

[MUSIC]

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