A is for "Applications"
First of all, I agree that quite a few actuaries or students desparately need to work on their communication skills. However, I strongly doubt CA3 would help in achieving that goal (to support my point, those who can't explain an interest rate even if their life depended on it actually passed 102 (one of them was actually a 102-marker!!), and other who really can explain things in simple terms, seem to keep failing 102 or CA3...)
* If I would use the style and vocab suggested by CA3 when writing a letter or whatever to the CFO, I'd be out of a job quite quickly for lack of respect, suggesting the CFO is an imbecil
* If I need to explain something to someone, I think that person would be less interested in whether my reply deviates by more than a certain percentage from 500 words; I think the main concern would be to get the point accross.
* The layout of slides; unfortunately, the company I work for has slide templates. I shall contact the communications department immediately to point out that their templates are useless because they are of a non-actuarial format
* I won't go on, except for this final point. I was lucky enough to have had communication trainings in Flemish, French, German and English (University and business communication). All of them were very useful and ALL of them were completely different from the CA3 nonsense: they could actually be used in practice.
If the A in CA3 stands for "applications", than I would really suggest someone goes out to the industry and has a look at what is really going on out there. Do you really believe it's all about jargon? You can use jargon, and then explain what it means. At least the person will then have picked up something.
And just to answer your question, yes, I did fail 102, although I did attend a 2 day tutorial where my writing was considered a definite pass. I even thought the exam went quite well. All this should explain the tone in this posting...