Business Communication Exam pattern 2014-2015

Revised Syllabus for F Y B Com            Program: B.Com.

Course: Business Communication

(Credit Based Semester and Grading System with effect from the academic year

2012-13)

1. Syllabus as per Credit Based Semester and Grading System:

i) Name of the Programme : F.Y. B.Com

ii) Course Code :

iii) Course Title : Business Communication  Papers I & II

iv) Semester wise Course Contents : Enclosed the copy of syllabus

v) References and Additional References: Enclosed in the Syllabus

2. Scheme of Examination : 5 Questions of 15 marks each

Course Objectives:

1. To develop awareness of the complexity of the communication process

2. To develop effective listening skills in students so as to enable them to  comprehend instructions and become a critical listener

3. To develop effective oral skills so as to enable students to speak confidently interpersonally as well as in large groups

4. To develop effective writing skills so as enable students to write in a clear, concise, persuasive and audience centered manner

5. To develop ability to communicate effectively with the help of electronic media

Semester I – Business Communication Paper I

Unit 1: Theory of Communication

1. Concept of Communication –

Meaning, Definition, Process, Need, Feedback

Emergence of Communication as a key concept in the Corporate and Global world

Impact of technological advancements on Communication

2. Channels and Objectives of Communication – 

Channels-- Formal and Informal—Vertical, Horizontal, Diagonal, Grapevine

Objectives of Communication --Information, Advice, Order and Instruction, Persuasion, Motivation, Education,

Warning, and Boosting the Morale of Employees (A brief introduction to these objectives to be given)

3. Methods and Modes of Communication –

Methods: Verbal and Nonverbal .   Characteristics of Verbal Communication;

Characteristics of Non-verbal Communication.   Business Etiquette

Modes: Telephone and SMS Communication  (General introduction to Telegram to be given)

Facsimile Communication [Fax]

Computers and E- communication

Video and Satellite Conferencing

4. Problems in Communication /Barriers to Communication --

Physical/ Semantic/Language / Socio-Cultural / Psychological / Barriers

Ways to Overcome these Barriers

5. Listening – 

Importance of Listening Skills , Cultivating good Listening Skills - 

6. Introduction to Business Ethics 

·          Concept and Interpretation

·          Importance of Business Ethics

·          Personal Integrity at the workplace

·         Business Ethics and media

·         Computer Ethics

·         Corporate Social Responsibility

Teachers can adopt a case study approach and address issues such as the following so as to orient and

sensitize the student community to actual business practices:

·         Surrogate Advertising

·         Patents and Intellectual Property Rights

·         Dumping of Medical/E-waste

·         Human Rights Violations and Discrimination on the basis of gender, race, caste, religion, appearance and sexual orientation at the workplace

·         Piracy

·         Insurance

·         Child Labour

Unit 2: Business Correspondence

1. Theory of Business Letter Writing --

Parts, Structure, Layouts—Full Block, Modified Block, Semi - Block

Principles of Effective Letter Writing

Principles of effective Email Writing

2. Personnel Correspondence – 

Statement of Purpose

Job Application Letter and Resume

Letter of Acceptance of Job Offer, Letter of Resignation

[Letter of Appointment, Promotion and Termination, Letter of Recommendation (to

be taught but not to be tested in the examination)]

Unit 3: Language and Writing Skills

1. Commercial Terms used in Business Communication

2. Paragraph Writing -Developing an idea, using appropriate linking devices, etc

Cohesion and Coherence, self-editing, etc [Interpretation of technical data,

Composition on a given situation, a short informal report etc.]

Activities

1. Listening Comprehension

2. Remedial Teaching

3. Speaking Skills: Presenting a News Item, Dialogue and Speeches

4. Paragraph Writing: Preparation of the first draft, Revision and Self – Editing,

Rules of spelling.

5. Reading Comprehension: Analysis of texts from the fields of Commerce

and Management 

SEMESTER II

Unit 1: Presentation Skills

1. Presentations – (to be tested in tutorials only) 

Principles of Effective Presentation ,Effective use of OHP ,Effective use of Transparencies

How to make a Power-Point Presentation

Unit 2: Group Communication

1. Interviews – 

Group Discussion

Preparing for an Interview

Types of Interviews – Selection, Appraisal, Grievance, Exit

2. Meetings -4

 and Importance of Meetings, Conduct of Meeting and Group Dynamics

Role of the Chairperson, Role of the Participants

Drafting of Notice, Agenda and Resolutions

3. Conference 

Meaning and Importance of Conference

Organizing a Conference

Modern Methods: Video and Tele – Conferencing

4. Public Relations –

Meaning

Functions of PR Department

External and Internal Measures of PR

Unit 3: Business Correspondence

1. Trade Letters 

Order, Credit and Status Enquiry, Collection (just a brief introduction to be given)

Only following to be taught in detail:-

Letters of Inquiry ,Letters of Complaints, Claims, Adjustments ,Sales Letters, promotional leaflets and fliers ,Consumer Grievance Letters ,Letters under Right to Information (RTI) Act

[Teachers must provide the students with theoretical constructs wherever necessary in order to

create awareness. However students should not be tested on the theory.]

Unit 4: Language and Writing Skills

1. Reports –Parts, Types

Feasibility Reports, Investigative Reports

 Summarisation – Identification of main and supporting/sub points  AND Presenting these in a cohesive manner

Tutorial Activities:

1. Presentations

2. Group Discussion

3. Mock Interviews

4. Mock Meetings / Conferences

5. Book Reviews/Summarization

6. Reading Comprehension: Analysis of texts from the field of Literature

[Suggested Books for Book Reviews: Books from the fields of Management, Finance, and Literature

Like – Sun Tzu :The Art of War, Eliyahu M. Goldratt : The Goal , Eliyahu M. Goldratt: It’s Not Luck ,

Spencer Johnson: Who Moved My Cheese, Stephen Lundin, Ph.D, Harry Paul, John Christen: Fish,

Chetan Bhagat One Night At A Call Center, Chetan Bhagat My Three Mistakes , Arindam Choudhary:

Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch ,Stephen Covey :Seven Habits of Successful People, George

Orwell: Animal Farm, Dr. Abdul Kalam: Wings of Fire ]

[N.B.: The above list is only indicative and not prescriptive.]

Paper Pattern for Examinations

F. Y. B. Com

Semester I Examination Marks 75

Question 1 Objective/Short Answer Questions (based on  Unit 1)                         15 marks

Question 2  Short Notes (3 out of 5) (based on cht. 1,2 &3 from Unit 1)              15 marks

Question 3  Essay Type / Detailed Answer Q  (based on Chapters. 4,5 and 6 from Unit 1)

[2 out of 3]                                                                                                                      15 marks

Question 4 A) Job Application Letter and Resume                                                   8 marks

B) Personnel Letters (2 out of 3)                                                                                  7 marks

(Statement of Purpose ,Letter of Acceptance of Job Offer

Letter of Resignation)

Question 4 A) Writing a paragraph (on 1 out of 2 topics)                                      5 marks

B) Editing a given paragraph (for better organization)                                           5 marks

C) Remedial Grammar                                                                                                  5 marks

Semester II Examination: Marks 75

Question 1 . Objective/Short Answer Questions based on Unit 1 &2                                15 marks

Question 2 . Short Notes (based on chapt  1, &2  from Unit 2) [3 out of 5]                      15 marks

Question 3.  Essay Type  ( based on ch 3 & 4 from Unit 2)    [2 out of 3)                            15 marks

Question 4  Letters [3 out of 5]                                                                                                   15 marks

(i) Letter of Inquiry

(ii) Complaint/Claims/Adjustment Letter

(iii) Sales Letter

(iv) Consumer Grievance Letter 7

(v) RTI Letter

Question 5 (A) Drafting of Reports [1 out of 2]                                                                      7 marks

(B) Drafting of Notice, Agenda and 2 Resolutions                                                                 4 marks

(C) Summarisation                                                                                                                       4 marks

Internal Assessment – Semesters  I & II –

}  Fill in the blanks, MCQs, True or False                       05 marks

}  Answer in one/two sentences                                    05 marks

}  Short notes (2 out of 3)                                               10 marks

Suggested Reading:

1. Agarwal, Anju D(1989) A Practical Handbook for Consumers, IBH.

2. Alien, R.K.(1970) Organisational Management through Communication.

3. Ashley,A(1992) A Handbook Of Commercial Correspondence, Oxford University Press.

4. Aswalthapa, K (1991)Organisational Behaviour, Himalayan Publication, Mumbai.

5. Atreya N and Guha (1994) Effective Credit Management, MMC School of Management, Mumbai.

6. Bahl,J.C. and Nagamia,S.M. (1974) Modern Business Correspondence and Minute Writing.

7. Balan,K.R. and Rayudu C.S. (1996) Effective Communication, Beacon New Delhi.

8. Bangh, LSue, Fryar,Maridell and Thomas David A. (1998) How to Write First Class Business

Correspondence, N.T.C. Publishing Group USA.

9.Banerjee, Bani P (2005) Foundation of Ethics in Mangement Excel Books

10.Businessworld Special Collector’s Issue: Ethics and the Manager

11. Barkar, Alan(1993) Making Meetings Work, Sterling Publications Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi.

12. Basu,C.R.(1998) Business Organisation and Management, T.M.H.New Delhi.

13. Benjamin, James (1993) Business and Professional Communication Concepts and Practices, Harper

Collins College Publishers, New York.

14. Bhargava and Bhargava91971) Company Notices, Meetings and Regulations

15. Black, Sam (1972) Practical Public Relations, E.L.B.S. London.

16. Bovee Courtland,L and Thrill, John V(1989) Business Communication, Today McGraw Hill, New York,

Taxman Publication.

17. Burton, G and Thakur, (1995) Management Today- Principles and Practices. T.M.H.,New Delhi.

18. Darrow, Richard, Forrstal, Dan and Coolman, Aubrey (1967) Public Relations Handbook, The Dartwell

Co., Chicago.

19. Dayal, Ishwar(9810) Managing Large Organizations: A Comparative Study.

20. Drucher,P.F.((1970) Technology, Management and Society, Pan Books London.

21. Drucher,P.F.((1974)Management Responsibilities Practices, Heinemann, London.

22.Eyre, E.C. (1985) Effective Communication Made Simple, Rupa and Co.Calcutta.

23. Ecouse Barry, (1999), Competitive Communication: A Rhetoric for Modern Business, OUP.

24. Fisher Dalmar, (1999), Communication in Organisation, Jaico Pub House, Mumbai, Delhi.

25. Frailley, L.E. (1982) Handbook of Business Letters, Revised Edn. Prentice Hall Inc.

26. French, Astrid (1993) Interpersonal Skills. Sterling Publishers, New delhi.

27 Fritzsche, David J (2005) Business Ethics: A Global and Managerial Perspective McGraw Hill

28. Garlside, L.E. (1980) Modern Business Correspondence, McDonald and Evans Ltd. Plymouth.

29. Ghanekar,A(1996) Communication Skills for Effective Management. Everest Publishing House, Pune.

30. Graves, Harold F. (1965) Report Writing, Prentice Hall, New Jersey.

8

31.Gupta, Anand Das (2010) Ethics, Business and Society: Managing Responsibly Response Books

32.Gupta, Dipankar (2006) Ethics Incorporated: Top Priority and Bottom Line Response Books

33. Krevolin, Nathan (1983) Communication Systems and Procedures for Modern Office, Prentice Hall,

New Jersey.

34. Lesikar, Raymond V and Petit, John D.(1994) Business Communication: Theory and Application ,

Richard D. Irwin Inc. Ilinois.

35. Ludlow,Ron.(1995) The Essence of Effective Communication, Prentice , New Delhi.

36.M. Ashraf, Rizvi (2006) Effective Technical Communication Tata McGraw Hill

37. Martson, John E. 1963) The Nature of Public Relations, McGraw Hill, New Delhi.

38. Majumdar,P.K.(1992) Commentary on the Consumer protection Act, Prentice, New Delhi.

39. McQuail, Denis (1975), Communication, Longman. 40. Merrihue, William (1960) Managing by Communication, McGraw Hill, New York.

41.Mishra Rajiv K (2006) Code of Conduct for Managers Rupa Company

42. Monippalli, M.M. (1997),The Craft of Business Letter Writing, T.M.H. New Delhi.

43. Montagu,A and Matson , Floyd(1979) The Human Connection, McGraw Hill,New York.

44. Murphy, Herta and Hilde Brandt, Herbert W (1984) Effective Business Communication, McGraw Hill,

New York.

45. Parry, John (1968) The Psychology of Human Communication.

46. Parson, C.J. and Hughes (1970) Written Communication for Business Students, Great Britain.

47. Peterson, Robert A and Ferrell, O.C (2005) Business Ethics: New Challenges for Business Schools

and Corporate Leaders Prentice Hall of India Pvt., Ltd

48. Phillip, Louis V. (1975) Organisational Communication- The Effective Management, Columbus Grid Inc.

49.. Ross, Robert D. (1977) The Management of Public Relations, John Wiley and Sons, U.S.A.

50.Sadri Sorab, Sinha Arun and Bonnerjee peter (1998) Business Ethics: Concepts and Cases Tata

McGraw Hill Public Company Limited

51.Shekhar, R.C (1997) Ethical Choices in Business Response Books

52. Stephenson, James (1988) Principles and Practice of Commercial Correspondence, Pilman and Sons

Ltd. London.

53.. Shurter, Robert L. (1971) Written Communication in Business, McGraw Hill, Tokyo.

SCANSION

A metrical line ending at a grammatical boundary or break—such as a dash or closing parenthesis—or with punctuation such as a colon, a semicolon, or a period. A line is considered end-stopped, too, if it contains a complete phrase. Many of Alexander Pope’s couplets are end-stopped, as in this passage from “An Essay on Man: Epistle I”:

Enjambment (pron. injámment): incomplete syntax at the end of the line. In the following example, the string what thou and I is looking for a verb to complete it, but the line-ending interrupts the onward pressure of the syntax, creating a kind of tension that is released when the verb is encountered at the beginning of the next line:

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I »
Did, till we lovd? Were we not weand till then?
(John Donne, The Good-morrow)

The word or phrase that completes the syntax and releases the tension is called the rejet (underlined in these examples): where the rejet is brief, as in the Donne example, the release is energetic, b…

Terms related to the format of a poem

For information about different forms of poetry, click here.

cadence		heroic couplet	line	run-on line
couplet	end-stopped line	inversion	line break	stanza	triplet

Line – A row of words.

Line break - where a line of poetry ends; may be end-stopped or not; when written out in a piece of prose, a virgule is used to indicate the line break.

End-stopped line – a line of poetry in which the punctuation naturally occurs at the end of the line **

 Run-on line – a line of poetry in which the punctuation is not contained within the line, and the line breaks without being punctuated **

 ** When reading a poem aloud, one should read to the punctuation; that is, do not pause or stop at the end of a line unless there is punctuation.

Stanza – a group of lines in a poem; analogous to a paragraph in prose writing.

 Couplet – two lines of rhymed poetry with the same meter that are next to each other within a larger poem.  Also called a distitch.

 Heroic couplet – Two rhymed lines of end-stopped iambic pentameter.     

 Triplet – A three-line stanza with a single rhyme.

                Ex: I know that you think

                       That hockey may stink,

                     But how ‘bout that rink?

 Inversion – reversal of the normal order of words, for emphasis or because the rhyme or meter demands it.  Examples can easily be found in Shakespeare and from Yoda.

 Cadence – The rising and falling rhythmic flow of spoken language, resulting from the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. A poem has cadence when large parts of it have a "beat" or rhythm. - See "Feet, meter, and scansion" for more information

Poetry Terms: Meter and Musicality

By Melissa Donovan  

In a previous post, I shared some basic poetry terms. Now, let’s elaborate by exploring meter.

In poetry, meter is quite complex so for now we’re going to stick with the absolute basics and look at a few core poetry terms that relate to meter and musicality.

Musicality in poetry is the sum of many different elements, all of which are also found in (you guessed it) music. The two basic musical components of a poem are rhythm and meter. These two poetry terms are inherently tied together and are often used interchangeably. However, they refer to completely different aspects of a poem’s musical tone.

Rhythm is motion, the overall flow of a piece as a whole. Meter, on the other hand, is the pattern of recurring accent that we can tap our feet to, the beat.

Rhythm = flow
Meter = pattern

Let’s take a closer look at meter

A Very Short Song

Once, when I was young and true,
Someone left me sad-
Broke my brittle heart in two;
And that is very bad.

Love is for unlucky folk,
Love is but a curse.
Once there was a heart I broke;
And that, I think, is worse.

-Dorothy Parker

Scansion

Do you remember diagramming sentences back in grammar school? Well, we can do something similar with poetry, only we are diagramming for meter. This is called scansion. Scanning a poem helps us better understand its meter, rhythm, and become a more prolific reader of poetry and writer of all things.

Feet

Meter is measured in units called feet. These are not the same feet we use here in the U.S. to measure distance. In poetry, a metrical foot consists of one accented syllable plus one or two unaccented syllables. Below are some metrical examples. The syllables in all caps are the accented syllables.

da-DUM da-DUM is an example of two iambs or iambic meters
DA de DA de is an example of two trochees or trochaic meters
ra-ta-TAH is an anapest or anapestic meter
LA-da-da is a dactyl or dactylic meter
BOMP-BOMP is a spondee or spondaic meter

To start scanning a poem, we first identify the prevailing foot. We’ll use bold to denote the accented syllables.

Once, when I was young and true,
Someone left me sad-
Broke my brittle heart in two;
And that is very bad.

Note that some accents are heavier than others, but all are equal in scansion marking. For example, in the first line, the word I is not stressed nearly as much as the words once, young, and true. If you match up the accent pattern shown in this example to the types of feet defined above, you’ll probably align most of it with trochee: DA de DA de. However, the final line in this stanza has a different meter: da-DUM da-DUM. So the last line is iambic meter.

Metrical Variation and Truncation

The next step in scansion is to determine how many feet are in each line.

Once, when I was young and true, trochee 4 feet
Someone left me sad- trochee 3 feet
Broke my brittle heart in two; trochee 4 feet
And that is very bad. iamb 3 feet

You’ll notice that the feet in the first three lines seem incomplete. When a poet deviates from any pattern, it is called metrical variation. In this particular example, we would have expected the accented words true, sad, and two to be followed by an unaccented syllable. Omitting an unaccented syllable, affecting an incomplete foot, is called truncation.

Line Lengths

Just like there are words that define the types of feet, there are also words that name different lengths of line:

monometer 1 foot
dimeter 2 feet
trimeter 3 feet
tetrameter 4 feet
pentameter 5 feet
hexameter 6 feet

Now, we can go in and replace our foot counts with proper words :

Once, when I was young and true, trochaic tetrameter (truncated)
Someone left me sad- trochaic trimeter (truncated)
Broke my brittle heart in two; trochaic tetrameter (truncated)
And that is very bad. iambic trimeter

Overall, the poem is written in truncated trochaic tetrameter with frequent metrical variations to trochaic trimeter and iambic trimeter. Wow, that sentence makes me sound pretty damn smart!

If you’re still reading at this point, can I just say I love you? Kindred spirits in poetry unite!

Lots of Poetry Terms

Meter is a tricky subject and this group of poetry terms only scratches the surface. Entire volumes have been written on this topic. I personally find it interesting to study, otherwise I would not have spent upwards of four hours researching and writing this post for you fine poetry loving folks.

There are a few more things to note about meter:

• The rules are not so hard and fast that you could not read this poem and come up with different results in a metrical scan of your own. In some cases, meters and feet are subjective.
• Meter is not always easy to scan. It took quite a search to find one simple, short poem that would lend itself well to this exercise.
• Meter is no indication of poetic skill. Many novice poets write in strict meter and plenty of advanced poets write in meter so complex, it is practically impossible to scan at all.