Hello, and welcome to this lecture on the writing process, part 1. Now by the end of this lecture, you will be able to brainstorm ideas before writing. And you'll be able to complete a SWOT and TOWS analysis that can assist you with your writing process. And you will also conduct an audience analysis before you begin, for the writing purpose. Right, now before you even begin the writing stage, you should plan out what it is that you want to do. What is the purpose of the document? What is it that you need to achieve? And for whom are you writing for? Now, depending on the purpose and the size of the business document, you may need to really think and plan before you even get to the writing stage. Generally, we want to outline the ideas that go into your document. You may need to ask yourself how to connect, or how some ideas connect to each other. Or you might ask yourself, how can I learn from certain concepts or data that I've collected within my business situation? So, your first stage should be the brainstorming stage. You can do this in groups or individually. And the point of brainstorming is to make note of as many ideas as you can that are related to the subject that you want to write about. You don't need to be worried about language or grammar at this point. The point is to be thinking about the subject from as many perspectives as you can and then make note of them. Okay, one of the ways that I like to brainstorm and that I've found to be quite effective in the past is to create concept maps. Creating concept maps is quite simple. You map out the concepts or ideas and see how they may be connected to other concepts. By doing this, you can see relations that you maybe didn't see before. Maybe new ideas and new connections might arise from you drawing out these concept maps. Now, a tool that I like to use for creating concept maps is called Cmaps. You can see the website here on the slide, down at the bottom. This slide basically outlines what a concept map is. I recommend pausing this video and taking a look at this map, and visiting the website to learn more about concept maps. It's really a useful tool for mapping out ideas and seeing how things are connected, and is a way, if you want to find out how you might support an argument, for example, you can outline it and strengthen your arguments in this way. Okay, other brainstorming techniques might include listing or free-writing or placing ideas into different categories. There are many different ways you can brainstorm. In the business world, a common tool that we use for brainstorming ideas, I guess you could say, is the SWOT analysis. The SWOT analysis is an excellent brainstorming tool for many business situations. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Basically, the purpose of the SWOT analysis is to list out and categorize variables within your situation. So for strengths, for example, we usually include items that are internal to your company or project. Here you want to list out elements already present in your company or situation that are advantageous and beneficial to your goals. Weaknesses, these usually include items that are also internal to your company or project. And here you want to list those elements already present in your company or situation that are disadvantageous, and are related to needs that need to be addressed within your company. Now opportunities, these are items that are usually external to your company or project. Here you want to list out elements already present, sorry, you might want to list out items that you want to exploit, so opportunities that you want to exploit, and how they may be related to competition, or the market, or the environment. Threats are also external to your company. And here you want to list out how elements of competition, or the market or environment, pose a threat to your company or project. Now, a basic form of completing a SWOT analysis may look something like this. And it's good way of listing out ideas that are related to your project. And it's a good tool, but again, it might be just a starting tool. If you want to go deeper, you could try something, what they call a TOWS analysis. Now the TOWS analysis builds upon the SWOT analysis by allowing you to connect relationships among the various categories. For examples, it allows you to identify a strength within your company and connect it to a possible opportunity, or maybe threats in the market. A basic strategy is to identify and prioritize a maximum of five items in each category, for example, five strengths, five weaknesses, etc., and map out how they connect to other categories. The form might look like something like this. And the following diagram illustrates how you might make connections across categories. Notice now how we can draw a clear connection between one of our company's strengths and an external threat, for example. Right, now there's one more thing I want to discuss. By completing these brainstorming exercises, you should also be thinking about your audience, and you should be thinking about an audience analysis. We've discussed the audience analysis before in previous lectures, and then we'll return to this constantly in future lectures. For now, I just want to note that you should be thinking about things like demographics of your audience. Or an attitudinal analysis, so what are your audience's or readers' attitude towards the subject that you're writing about? And even, what is an attitude towards you and your possible ideas? You also should be thinking about the environment in which the situation may be taking place, and overall, the needs and concerns of your readers. Okay, by now you should be able to do a brainstorming exercise for ideas before you get to the writing process. And this can include the SWOT analysis and a TOWS analysis, and also a audience analysis. Thank you very much for watching.
