¶ … admit that I was not confident in my written communication skills. I felt that written communication lacked some of the emotion of verbal communication, and that even the emoticons used in casual written communication could be misconstrued. Therefore, I feel like having the exposure to different types of business writing and the standards and norms associated with them has been helpful. For example, I had no idea how to write a negative letter without jeopardizing an existing business relationship. When I came to understand that my purpose, "when sending a negative message, [was] (ironically) not to give bad news but to create goodwill around the bad news," I realized that business communication was substantively different from personal communication (Stubbs, 2009). I think that the work that I did in class shows improvement over the course, and that was my goal in the class. It is difficult for me to look back and find ways that I could have improved my performance in the course, not because I feel as if my...

Obviously, with more learning and more practice, I could improve on those efforts at this point in time. However, I do not look at that as a negative; the class would have been without value to me if I entered it with the same proficiency I have as I leave it.
I felt comfortable with most of the material presented in the coursework, and I do not feel as if I have any serious lingering questions about any of the topics. However, I do wonder how important the persuasive memo is in a modern business context. I do not know anyone who routinely uses persuasive memos in a business context, despite the fact that they are a good way to present facts and a position argument in a single location (Ashley, 2012). That is not to suggest that they do not use persuasive writing, but the memo seems to be falling out of favor. I do not know if this is a misperception on my part, or if, perhaps, the course should focus on the…