BCS-055 Business Communication Solved Assignment 2018-2019

Course Code : BCS-055
Course Title : Business Communication
Assignment Number : BCS/(5)/055/Assignment/2018-19
Maximum Marks : 100
Weightage : 25%
Last date of submission : 15th October, 2018 (For July, 2018 Session)
15th April, 2019 (For January, 2019 Session)

This assignment has ten questions. Answer all questions. Please go through the
guidelines regarding assignments given in the Programme Guide for the format
of presentation of assignment.

Question 1: This passage is part of the speech that Steve Jobs (who began Apple and
created Macintosh and the I-Phone) gave at the convocation in Stanford
University, USA. Read the passage carefully and answer the questions
given below:
I was lucky I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started
Apple in my parents’ garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10
years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a two
billion dollar company with over 4000 employees. We’d just released our
finest creation the Macintosh a year earlier, and I had just turned 30.
And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started?
Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented
to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well.
But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we
had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him.
And so at 30, I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus
of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the
previous generation of entrepreneurs down − that I had dropped the
baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob
Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very
public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley.
But something slowly began to dawn on me: I still loved what I did. The
turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected,
but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the
best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being
successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less
sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative
periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT; another
company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who
would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world’s first
computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most
successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events,
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Apple bought NeXT, and I retuned to Apple, and the technology we
developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And
Laurene and I have a wonderful family together. I’m pretty sure none of
this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was an
awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life’s
going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m
convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I
did. You’ve got to find what you love.
And that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to
fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied
is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great
work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking
and − don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you
find it. And like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the
years roll on. So keep looking, don’t settle.
Question 1(a) How and why was Steve Jobs fired from the company that he started?
(2 marks)
Question 1(b) Why does Steve Jobs say that getting fired was the best thing that
happened to him? (3 marks)

Question 1(c) How did Steve Jobs rejoin Apple? (2 marks)

Question 1(d) What kept Steve Jobs going when he was fired from his job? (2 marks)

Question 1(e) Why is it important to love what you do in your professional life?
(2 marks)

Question 1(f) What is Pixar famous for? (2 marks)
Question 1(g) From the passage given above, write five sentences on what you think
was the character and personality of Steve Jobs. (3 marks)

Question 1(h) In about hundred words write a passage on ‘The job that I would love
to do if I get the chance’. (4 marks)
Question 2: Use the following words/phrases from the passage in sentences of your
own: (5 marks)
diverge, falling out, entrepreneur, devastating, dropped the baton
Question 3: You are a firm manufacturing toys for children. Your main distributor
‘Kids World’ has threatened to break off relations with you because
you sent a large consignment of defective dinky cars. Write an email
to them: (10 marks)
 Apologizing profusely
 Offering to replace the defective pieces
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 Talk about the changes that you will make in the organization so
that such a thing does not recur
Question 4: This matter is serious enough for a senior member of your organization
to speak to ‘Kids World’. Write a dialogue between the Regional
Manager of your company and the Regional Manager of ‘Kids World’.
Take about ten turns. (10 marks)
Question 5: Write a memo to your staff calling them for a meeting to discuss this
issue. Ask them to come with suggestions and solutions. (10 marks)

Question 6: Write short notes on the following: (10 marks)
i The use of graphics in presentations
ii The value of ‘social small talk’ in business
Question 7: You have seen an online advertisement for a vacancy on
www.indiajobs.com in your dream company. Prepare an application
indicating your interest in that particular job and how you are a suitable
candidate. Also compile your Curriculum Vitae (CV) that you will
attach with this letter of application. (15 marks)
Question 8: Prepare the outline of a presentation on any one of the following:
(10 marks)
i Your career so far
ii The history of a company that interests you
iii The importance of communication skills in business
Question 9: Fill in the blanks with the suitable (active or passive) form of the verbs
in brackets: (10 marks)
Once a valve…………. (damage) beyond repair, as happens with
recurrent attacks of a rheumatic fever, the only way to save the patient,
…………(be) to replace it. Almost all replacements …………(do)
today using mechanical devices. Among the earliest …………(be) the
ball-and-cage valve which …………(invent) in 1961 by Albert Sterr, a
surgeon of Portland, Oregon, USA and his collaborators M. Lowell
Edwards. It …………(have) a plastic ball in a stainless steel or
titanium cage. But the device ……………(have) several
disadvantages. The presence of the ball…….. (cause) severe
turbulence and cavitation which also ………………(cause) damage to
red blood cells leading to the risk of clot formation. It ………………
(be) therefore necessary to put the patient on a long term anticoagulant
therapy.