Draft Report feedback and comments here. While your tutor will have made specific comments on individual assignments, here is some broad general feedback about the assignments as a whole. Keep in mind that not all of these points may apply to your work.
Quick Links
Class and Portfolio Exercise 1: Communication ethics in the professions
Portfolio Exercise 2:
Internet ethics
Portfolio Exercise 3: Ethics in the news
Portfolio Exercise 4: Case studies in communication and ethics
Writing style exercises 7: Subject-verb agreement
Writing style exercises 8: Using parallelism in sentences and paragraphs
Week 13 - Ethics & Communication
As a starting point this week, we will be returning your draft reports. Please see this as a 'work-in-progress' as the aim is to help you develop your research and writing skills via constructive feedback. Most students whose work I marked have the basic idea of layout and structure but in general, report content and substance needs further work. See our comments above and don't be afraid to ask your tutor for help.
We will be using the remaining two weeks to help you work on and improve your Final Report so a good starting point is to make sure that you refer to the Report Writing Checklist that comes from your textbook.
What is ethics?
The first thing that should be stated about Ethics and Communication is that ethics is more a universally applicable set of principles which we should apply to our daily lives. It affects how we conduct business, play sport and make decisions in many aspects of our lives. It is an intangible concept but one which is generally thought to reflect the role of truth and lies within our culture.
To begin with a definition, we need to place the study of ethics within the idea of ‘philosophy’. From this then, ‘ethics’ can be defined as:
a systematic attempt, through the use of reason, to make sense of our individual and social and moral experience in such a way as to determine the rules which govern human conduct and the values worth pursuing in life.
Questions of right and wrong arise whenever people communicate and ethical communication is fundamental to responsible thinking and decision making. It is also important to the development of relationships and communities within and across cultures, media and society more broadly. So when thinking about communication skills such as those we have studied in this course, there are other issues beyond competence (the ability to write or speak or communicate effectively). They relate to the ethics of communication in professions generally. For more on this see page 4 of your textbook.
In terms of new communication technologies, one of the major issues that is impacted on by ethical considerations is that of copyright. Whilst ethics is a more general set of principles, copyright is more of a country-specific, legally-binding set of policies which are constantly changing in response to governments, lobby groups and technology itself. There have recently been proposed changes to Australian copyright law as it effects downloading of music. Some information on this can be found on the Electronic Frontiers Australia website. For a broader overview of aspects of internet ethics, see this summary.
Other ethical issues in professional communication
Ethical considerations apply in many different communication situtations. In fact most 'Codes of Conduct' are statements of the requirements of ethical behaviour. Here are some examples:
For more detail on aspects of this topic, see Chapter 5 of your textbook (pp. 130-138).
Class and Portfolio Exercise 1: Communication ethics in the professions
Read Case Study 1.1 from your textbook (p. 5). The original article can also be found here. It was written by Dr Simon Longstaff of the St James Ethics Centre in Sydney. Discuss the following questions with your class. Make notes to include with your portfolio.
Portfolio Exercise 2: Internet Ethics
Read both the article by Ornatowski (2001) plus an old article by Ray Archee (1996) on the topic of internet ethics. Compare the arguments being made. Since 2001, there have been even more technological advances which might have ethical implications. Consider the issue of privacy as it applies to social media like Facebook, Twitter, Blogs etc. What has changed? Write about 500 words and don't forget to include your references at the end, set out using APA format. Make sure you have read the summary link above. Here it is again.
Here are two interesting articles that might come in useful.
Portfolio Exercise 3: Ethics in the news
Do a Google search for three (3) newspaper stories on one (1) of the following issues as they relate to the ethics of the internet and write a 500 word summary of the stories. Include your references
a. intellectual property/plagiarism
b. privacy/ surveillance
c. ethics of music downloading
d. cyberbullying
Portfolio Exercise 4: Case studies in communication and ethics
Do one (1) of these case studies and include it in your portfolio.
1. You have just written up a draft for the instruction manual of a new piece of equipment. Your boss has edited out much of the material concerning the safety aspects of the product. The product brochures stress the equipment's reliability not its safety concerns. Your boss says that you are exaggerating the problem. How do you stay ethical?
2. In 1998 American television stations aired two live broadcasts of a bank robber killing himself and a man shooting himself in the head on a freeway after a lengthy standoff with police. In 1999, five California TV news helicopters broadcast live the fatal shooting by police of a man who had led authorities on another three-hour freeway chase. This episode occurred the day after Thanksgiving and dominated morning TV when many children were home and tuning to watch cartoons. The critics expressed disgust at exposing children and adults to such graphic violence. Critics argued that if coverage is live, outcomes cannot be predicted, so viewers cannot be warned about up-coming violence. What are the ethical issues
More on Writing & Editing
OK, we're getting down to the part of the course where you need to edit your report. Once you have your draft report back, pay attention to the comments made by your tutor and work on improving it for final submission. Check out this report from your textbook.
So far we've looked at some principles of style which will make your writing easier to understand, less wordy and more reader-friendly. So when we have finished the first draft of our reports, what do we do then? Hopefully you've taken my suggestion and brought a soft copy of your report to class. Work through the points below and then go over your report with a fine tooth comb. Can you apply some of these principles to your writing?
A common error in professional and academic writing is the use of the wrong form of the verb for its subject. In other words, the verb chosen does not agree with the subject in terms of ‘number’ (ie singular or plural), or person (1st person, 2nd person or 3rd person). Subject-verb agreement errors not only affect the clarity of the writing, but also the credibility of the message and the writer.
Here are some examples of errors in subject-verb agreement – the incorrect sentence is in red and the correct one is in blue. The verbs in question are underlined. The explanation is # underneath.
Flash tutorial on subject-verb agreement. You might also want to check out this page as well as this link.
1a. John live in France.
1b. John lives in France.
# The subject 'John' requires the third person singular form of the verb 'to live' (lives).
2a. He were in Italy before that.
2b. He was in Italy before that.
# The subject 'he' requires the third person simple past form of the verb 'be' (was).
3a. Both the United States and China supports the new proposal.
3b. Both the United States and China support the new proposal.
# The subject 'both the United States and China' requires the third person plural form of the verb 'to support' (support).
4a. The argument outlined by the politicians are sound and well supported.
4b. The argument outlined by the politicians is sound and well supported.
# The subject 'argument' requires the third person singular form of the verb 'be' (is).
Writing style exercises 7: Download these exercises on subject-verb agreement.
Here are some suggested answers and explanations.
When writing a sentence, especially if it includes a list, you should make sure that the expressions within the sentence are parallel. This principle requires that expressions of similar content and function should be outwardly similar. The likeness of form or expression enables the reader to recognize more readily the likeness of content and function. Look at these examples which come from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/623/1/ (check out some of the other parts of this site too).
Faulty Parallelism
Corrected Version
Formerly, science was taught by the textbook method, while now the laboratory method is employed.
Formerly, science was taught by the textbook method; now it is taught by the laboratory method.
The left-hand version gives the impression that the writer is undecided or timid; he seems unable or afraid to choose one form of expression and hold to it. The right-hand version shows that the writer has at least made his choice and abided by it. The parallel expressions are in bold.
The French, the Italians, Spanish, and Portuguese …
The French, the Italians, the Spanish, and the Portuguese …
In spring, summer, or in winter
In spring, summer, or winter (In spring, in summer, or in winter)
By this principle, an article or a preposition applying to all the members of a series must either be used only before the first term or else be repeated before each term.
It was both a long ceremony and very tedious.
The ceremony was both long and tedious.
Correlative expressions (both, and; not, but; not only, but also; either, or; first, second, third; and the like) should be followed by the same grammatical construction. Many violations of this rule can be corrected by rearranging the sentence.
Parallel construction adds clarity, elegance and symmetry to your writing. It is achieved by aligning noun aligned with noun, verb with verb, and phrase with phrase within a sentence. When listing items, use parallel structure. This is harder to do when the list is long.
Flash tutorial on parallelism in sentences and paragraphs.
Writing style exercises 8: Download these exercises and complete them for your portfolio.
Here are some suggested answers.
Our textbook has been newly revised especially for this unit. Most lectures and many class activities will be based on the book, so we recommend that all students have access to a copy and bring it to class every week. Copies will be made available in the Library Closed Reserve.
In addition, class discussions and presentations will be based on more specific readings on the weekly topic. These can be found under the 'Tutorial Readings' tab at the top of this page.
Professional communication in the news |
