Plain
English Hong Kong
Centre for Professional and Business
English |
|
We are committed
to promoting Plain English writing in Hong Kong.
To find out more about Plain English
and how it can transform your written communication, click
on the links below
Our Plain English services
What
is Plain English?
It's the name of the most important
style of English business writing.
It's a world-wide movement towards using clear, understandable
English.
It's writing that is reader-centred; it is written with the
reader's needs in mind.
It's a style that makes sure that readers can extract information
from text efficiently.
It uses carefully chosen words to express ideas.
How
will Plain English benefit your organisation?
It provides the best possible
information service to your clients
If your organisation writes to its customers and clients
in Plain English, it will provide them with clear, easily
understood information about your products and services.
Plain English shows the people you deal with that you are
committed to good service and are open and accountable. It
makes it a pleasure for people to deal with you.
It saves time and reduces
conflict in your workplace
Plain English text is much faster to read and absorb. It
is much less likely to lead to misunderstanding or confusion,
both of which give rise to conflict.
Improved returns on marketing
expenditure
Plain English makes the most of your marketing by ensuring
that the information you provide, matches the positive image
your marketing efforts create.
Improved client service through
improved information accessibility
Information accessibility relates to the number of people
who understand the information that you present. Accessible
information is understood by a greater number of people.
Providing accessible information about services and products
* reduces non income generating
client queries
* reduces time between your clients' first contact and
your generating income through providing services and products
* gives you an important competitive advantage
* reduced data collection costs
If you use Plain English techniques
to improve your organisation's forms and other data collection
tools, you will reduce data errors and improve data collection
efficiency.
Improved returns on web design
expenditure
Well designed web-pages with clear navigation need to be
supported by clear language. This is crucial given the complexity
of modern organisations
How
will Plain English benefit you?
It will immediately improve
your writing.
Improving your English proficiency takes a long time. Plain
English techniques immediately make you a more effective
writer irrespective of your level of English proficiency.
Plain English lets you make the most of your existing proficiency.
It will make you a powerful
communicator
When you write in Plain English you come across as professional,
clear thinking and client oriented.
Effectively organising and presenting your professional knowledge
makes it visible to your client. Plain English gives you
a clearly defined set of skills that you can rely on to organise
and present information in the best possible way.
If the information that you are trying to convey is confusingly
presented, you will appear confused. If your tone is inappropriate,
you may appear rude or condescending. Plain English ensures
you avoid these problems.
It will improve your efficiency
and give you a visible competitive advantage
By using Plain English you make sure that people retrieve
information that they need from you efficiently and clearly.
This gives you a visible competitive advantage in your workplace
because all people dealing with you immediately see that
you are clear thinking and client oriented.
It will improve your most
important communication skill
Most business communication takes place through email. 80%
of the world's email is in English. Plain English gives you
a framework from which you can write confidently and clearly.
How
is Plain English training so cost effective?
Many company English courses focus
mainly on proficiency. Plain English training focuses on
skills. What is the difference between proficiency training
and skills training?
Proficiency training.
Proficiency training focuses on improving a person's general
ability in a language. Improving proficiency requires longer
training courses. For this reason they are not
cost effective for companies. Companies either
pay for the long courses and see limited improvement or
they request short courses which cost less, but frequently
result in no improvement.
We believe that proficiency training
is best viewed as the responsibility of the individual, because
the motivation needed to learn a language rests with the
individual. We offer English proficiency training courses
to the public, which company employees can attend
in their own time and in most cases claim from the
CEF.
Example: Elementary English speaking course.
Skills training.
Skills training helps people who are already proficient to
learn better ways of using language.
Skills training is typically shorter
than proficiency training, and teaches a clearly
defined set of techniques and vocabulary.
Skills training is cost effective
and valuable to companies because it relates directly
to employee performance. Another way of looking at skills
training is that it helps employees get the greatest benefit
from their existing proficiency.
Example: Plain English writing course
Plain English skills training
Plain English has a very clearly defined
set of techniques which when applied, make an immediate improvement
to writing.
We are able to teach these techniques
quickly, and give course participants an opportunity to practise
them.
Plain English reduces training time
but significantly changes writing ability.
These are the
Plain English services we offer
Plain
English Seminars for Management
We offer free Plain English management
training seminars as part of our commitment to ensuring Hong
Kong keeps up with worldwide English communication trends.
At our seminars we show how Plain English
continues to transform written business communication around
the world. We explain the relationship between Plain English
and improved efficiency and employee accountability. We demonstrate
how it makes products and services more visible and attractive
and how it is increasingly required by law.
Plain
English Writing Courses for Companies
We offer company training courses in
Plain English writing techniques to help your staff improve
the efficiency, accuracy and professionalism of their written
communication.
We run these courses in companies for
groups of 10 to 20 employees at a time. We are confident
that these are amongst the best writing programmes in Hong
Kong at the moment, and are currently used by many of Hong
Kong's leading agencies and multinationals.
We will tailor the courses to suit
your employees' needs by giving participants an opportunity
to work with their own authentic texts.
Our training courses are either class-based,
online, or a mixture of both. Part of the tailoring process
is giving you an opportunity to decide what form of programme
best suits the needs of your organisation.
Training
your own writers and editors
Do your senior staff spend a lot of
their time editing the writing of junior staff?
This is a common problem companies
face in Hong Kong. We can help you systematically reduce
the time your senior staff spend on editing, giving them
more time to focus on their core job functions.
We do this by training members of your
own staff as Plain English editors, and then supporting them
with materials and skills to systematically improve the abilities
of the staff whose work they edit. We help you turn a part
of your everyday work process into a learning experience
for your staff.
Your senior staff will still be responsible
for final checks on information that is being sent out, but
the amount of editing they have to do while performing this
task will be significantly reduced.
Our approach is cost effective because
it does not intrude on Company time in the way that training
courses do. By providing your staff with internal support
and training, you ensure that their improvement is directly
related to workplace documents, and you remove the risk of
outsiders accessing sensitive company information.
Editing
your writing
We offer a Plain English editing service
that gives our clients confidence that they are providing
information to their clients in the best possible way.
Use us as your editor if you want to
clearly communicate with your audience through your website,
your annual report and your promotional material.
If you collect information from your
clients or the public, let us help you create effective forms
that will enable you to do this. By improving the accuracy
of the data you collect, you will improve the efficiency
of processing it. You will also become visibly client centred.
Writing
for you in Plain English
We offer a Plain English writing service
that gives our clients confidence that they are providing
information to their clients in the best possible way.
Use us as your copywriter if you want
to clearly communicate with your audience through your website
enough, promotional material and through documents you send
to the public.
