1. What is the difference between General writing skills path and Report writing skills path ?

General writing skills path mostly focuses on drafting, reviewing, and managing daily communications such as emails. The report writing skills path focuses on developing advanced techniques for drafting, structuring, and refining formal documents that clearly present complex information, analyses, and visuals to effectively inform and engage readers.


2. When do I have to choose between the two skills paths?

After the first two common weeks, you will have to choose whether to follow the General Writing Skills path or the Report Writing Skills path.


3. I participated in the 2024 Effective Writing Skills and would like to take the other skills path. Can I?

As we have a limited number of slots, priority is given to participants who have never taken the Effective Writing Skills course before.


4. What will be cover during the entire programme ? 


Week 1 (all participants) - Effective document drafting I: process and getting started. 

  • Pre-writing strategies and considerations (including linguistic considerations) required to write a first draft with a clear sense of direction, message and voice. 


Week 2 (all participants) – Effective document drafting II: the linguistic jungle.  

  • Approaches, techniques and skills to express an idea with maximum clarity. 
  • Emphasis on reader-friendliness, but not at the expense of professionalism. 
  • Additional linguistic issues (e.g., nominalizations, passive voice) will be addressed. 


Week 3:  

General writing skills path – Composition of emails.  

  • Formulating the appropriate subject line, opening and closing;  
  • Internal versus external communication;  
  • Determining the appropriate tone/degree of formality;  
  • The human touch above all. 

Report writing skills path – Dense, denser, densest.  

  • Exploring most common linguistic constructions and pitfalls that make a reader or longer documents shut down.

 

Week 4:  

General writing skills path – Getting it right.  

  • How to best organize complex information in an email;  
  • Draft emails that contain negative messages;  
  • Diplomacy;  
  • “Me” versus “you” correspondence. 

Report writing skills path – Beyond text: structure, format and graphics.  

  • Importance of a reader-friendly structure and format, and the underuse, use – and abuse – of acronyms, charts, graphs, tables, text boxes and photographs. 


Week 5:  

General writing skills path – Reviewing your work and basic email etiquette. 

  • Quality assurance techniques to ensure structural coherence, linguistic clarity, and compelling messages. 

Report writing skills path – Revising and refining your work.  

  • Methodologies to ensure structural integrity and attractiveness, linguistic clarity, compelling messages and proofreading techniques.


5. What is the time commitment per week to fully complete the training? 

Approximate time commitment to fully participate in this course (completing pre-work, attending webinars, forum discussions, etc.) is 4-6 hours per week (2-4 hours preparation + 2 hours of webinar). 


6. Mandatory training completion certificates are part of the application requirements for the UN Emerging Leaders e-Learning programme, where could I locate it in I-Learn?
To generate your training certificates in Wave Learn, you may refer to this FAQ article in the HR Support Portal. For the full list of IOM mandatory trainings, you may refer here.