The Professional Communication Project (PCP) enables students of CityU’s BA in English for Professional Communication (BAEPC) programme to put theory into practice. we learned a lot from this unforgettable assignment—a fundamental course for all BAEPC final-year students in the Department of English and Communication (EN).

 

For the Professional Communication Project, final-year BAEPC students are grouped together and engage in a year-long collaboration with relevant organizations. There was a common theme among the 14 PCP groups in my year: asking people to show they care. Raising funds for worthy causes was one of the most common and important tasks we accomplished.

 

Take our group as an example: we assisted a non-government organization called “Teen AIDS”. Our duty was to arrange a series of activities aimed at raising publicity and funds. Our final event, “Teen City Night” -- a band and dance show, managed to collect around HK$20,000 in donations for the organization.

 

That was we first time to organize a “mini-concert” and we consider the outcome successful. When contacting performers, artists and sponsors, we applied what we’d learned in class about writing successful letters. Thanks to the News Writing course, we didn’t have any difficulty in writing our pre- and post-event press releases. Likewise, the Desktop Publishing course helped us to create attractive posters and leaflets to publicize Teen AIDS.

 

Our group had regular meeting with Teen AIDS staff to keep our work on track and responsive to their needs and requests; we did our best to fulfill them, as well as our own objectives. Needless to say, we did not get everything right the first time and mistakes and problems occurred, but we learned to handle them.

 

We are now ready to embark on “A Journey to Professionalism”—the Professional Communication Projects Annual Exhibition 2005—to share with you the fruits of our studies and our work experience. It takes place 13-15 April in Multi-Purpose Rooms A, B and C.