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B USINESS E NGLISH professional                                

Business skills 3

Emalng

Debbie Barton,
Jennifer Burkart
and Caireen Sever
ask some questions and
suggest some solutions
especially for those new
to business English.

he business skills we have dealt

with so far in this series
(meetings and presentations)
are concerned mainly with
speaking and listening. Emailing is
obviously different, with its focus on
writing and reading. Writing emails is a
key business skill but not a natural one;
it has to be learnt through instruction
and practice. Writing is rarely the main
reason why learners attend a language
course, is often associated with school
English and can be seen as a dry and
lonely activity. Thus we have one of our
first problems: motivation. How do we
make writing in the business English
classroom interesting?
In addition, we have the problems
our learners express. The following are
common:
My sentences are too long and sound
too much like a word-for-word
translation from my own language.
I havent got time to check my English
after writing an email and grammar
and spelling arent as important as in
letters anyway.
My emails are too formal.
From these comments we can see that
translation is a problem, often arising
from the use of bilingual dictionaries or
online translation programs. This in
turn leads to problems of accuracy.
Although accuracy in emailing is often
considered less important than it is in
business letters, it is still vital in order to
make the learners emails easy to
understand and professional and to
avoid misunderstandings.
The lack of accuracy does not just
come from reliance on translation, but
also from a lack of knowledge of a

range of fixed phrases and poor editing

skills.
Another problem is that emailing
has no set rules or conventions. Instead,
it has its own netiquette, which
recommends that emails should be
polite, concise and replied to within
24 hours. This impacts on our learners:
as well as writing accurately, using
conventional phrases and an
appropriate tone, they need to write
fluently and quickly.

There is so much to teach.

What aspects of the skill
should I focus on?
You need to find out exactly what kind
of emails your learners write and
receive before giving emailing lessons.
This can be done through a Q and A
session or a questionnaire. In particular,
find out:
who they are writing to (the audience)
since this determines the style of the
email: an email to colleagues whom
they know well is much less formal
than one which is a one-off
correspondence.
the purpose of the emails, eg asking
for information, complaining or
apologising. This determines the type
of functional language to teach.
As part of a series of writing lessons it
is useful to work on the process of
writing, including brainstorming ideas,
writing a draft and editing a final
version. This instills good practice and
helps learners to produce well-organised
emails with fewer errors. Focusing on
sequencing language (firstly, secondly,
finally) can also help with organisation.

www.etprofessional.com ENGLISH TEACHING professional Issue 48 January 2007

37



B USINESS E NGLISH professional                                

Business skills 3

Emalng



It is also important for learners to

know fixed phrases for emailing, eg With
reference to your email of since these
help avoid direct translation. To enable
learners to use the phrases appropriately,
they need to know whether phrases are
formal or informal, what makes them so
and when to use each.
Along with the skill of writing, it is
important to spend time practising
reading and understanding emails. As part
of this, it is useful to look at abbreviations,
especially if your learners communicate
with native speakers. Some of the most
common business abbreviations are used
in emails, eg asap, but they are now being
combined with aspects of text messaging,
including emoticons for example :(
to produce a totally unique language.

How can I best input new

skills and new language?
Remembering the issue of motivation, it
is important to make activities as
communicative as possible. A good
starting point is to discuss what and
how your learners write in their own
language. You can use a card sort like
the one below where the learners discuss
the stages they go through when they
write. They can then agree the best
order for the stages and use this as the
basis for future email writing activities.
Collect
information

Start
writing

Write the
first draft

Read and
edit

Think of who
Im writing to

Think about why

Im writing

Read, edit
and send

Write another
draft

Decide what
to write

Organise the
information

You can use the emails your learners

supply or examples from coursebooks
to analyse organisation (this will also
give reading practice). These should
include:
an introductory paragraph giving
background details of the reason for
writing
38

the main body of the email giving

further details
the conclusion saying what future
action is expected
Of course, not all emails will follow this
pattern, especially if they are replies and
the original email is attached. They may
even be as short as OK! However, you
can use such examples to look at when
short replies are appropriate.
There are many ways to input fixed
phrases. For example, ask your learners
to go through their workplace emails
and highlight any phrases they could
use again, eg I look forward to hearing
from you soon. Have them categorise
each phrase into beginning, middle or
end of the email, then compare their
phrases with lists of fixed phrases from
a coursebook. They can also add what
function the phrase serves. As a
summary they can draw up charts like
these, which they can keep for reference
every time they email.
beginning
Referring to
previous contact

With reference to
your email of

end
Referring to
future contact

I look forward to
hearing from you
soon.

You can organise the phrases they have

found into levels of formality, then
analyse what it is that makes the phrases
more or less formal, eg using multi-word
verbs (let you know) instead of one-word
alternatives (inform). Get the learners to
decide which phrases they would use for
people they regularly correspond with,
thinking about how well they know this
person and how formal they should be.
Include work on common abbreviations
used in emails and when these are
appropriate or not. This again can be
done as a simple card sort.

Always remind
your learners
of the process of
writing and build
in time for the
preparation stage
mind map of ideas they want to include
in their email or making quick notes are
good approaches to use. Then ask the
learners to organise the content into the
beginning, middle and end, making sure
they have used linking and organising
phrases such as firstly, next, in
conclusion, etc.
Finally, the learners can start to
write if possible, using a word
processor (more realistic for them and
you can ensure they know how to use
the spell checker!). Set a time limit for
the first draft. This helps develop
fluency, replicates common workplace
scenarios and helps to maintain pace
and interest in the lesson. A second or
third draft can then be written with the
final version published (on paper,
OHT or flipchart) in the lesson for
feedback.
To give learners practice in writing
formal and informal emails, first give
them two emails cut up into parts for
them to reassemble. The emails should
have the same purpose but contrasting
styles. Once the emails are reassembled,
learners compare the style of key phrases.
Finally, they write a reply from prompts,
using the most appropriate style.
To practise fluency, you can give
learners a subject line and relevant
recipient which, within a strict time
limit, they develop to produce an
appropriate email.
You have five minutes to write
the following email.

Now Ive given them the

language, how do I get my
learners to practise it?

To: Mr Brown,
Human Resources Manager

Always remind your learners of the

process of writing and build in time for
the preparation stage. This can be done
either individually or in pairs/small
groups, the latter helping to make the
lesson more communicative. Drawing a

Subject: Request for information

Issue 48 January 2007 ENGLISH TEACHING professional www.etprofessional.com

From: Jane Jones

For editing practice, give learners a

complex version of an email which they
have to break down into simpler
sentences. You can also use this

B USINESS E NGLISH professional                                

rewriting process for other purposes, for
example giving learners a very impolite
or informal email and asking them to
rewrite it in a better way. You can also
use a chain email where a message of
around 30 words is written and passed
to another learner, this person then
summarises the message in fewer than
20 words and then passes the message
on to one more person who summarises
the message in fewer than ten words.
The participants then get together and
compare the last message with the
original to discuss how much of the
meaning is lost.
Any reading activity within the
course will obviously practise the
learners skill in reading and
understanding emails. For a more
specific task you can use a framework
like the following.
Read the three emails and complete
the table.
Purpose Audience

Main
points

How should I give feedback

and what should I focus on?
It is very easy to focus only on mistakes
in writing. To avoid this, consider the
overall effect on the target audience and
not only mistakes in grammar and
spelling. Here is one idea:
Put the learners into two groups.
Each group writes an email to the
other group, asking for an urgent
report to be sent. (Both groups are
busy colleagues who do not really
have time to do it.)
Ask the groups if the emails they
receive are polite enough and if they
feel as if they would put themselves
out to send the report urgently or not!
When you mark emails, it is important
to use a consistent method and explain
this to your learners. Typical methods
involve writing codes at the end of lines
indicating the problem. For example:

Points
for
action

email 1
email 2
email 3

There is so much material out

there what if none of it is
appropriate for my learners?
Use emails the learners write and
receive as your main resource. These
give you typical scenarios and contexts
which you can use to adapt many of the
readily available resources. You can also
use names and subject lines from
learner emails to make your resources
even more relevant. Similarly, when the
learners practise writing, ensure that
they write using their own name and
facts related to their job.
As you can see from the examples in
this article, framework materials are
also useful in tailoring activities to
specific learners.

Use names
and subject lines
from learner emails to
make your resources
even more relevant

p
prep
sp
t

Dear Mr Smith
thank you for your email
from 23 October. I am sorry
for any inconvenence caused.
A refund has been sent to
your account yesterday.
Yours sincerely
Jane Smith (Mrs)
p = punctuation
prep = preposition
sp = spelling
t = tense

An alternative strategy is to ask the

learners what they want to focus on.
Criteria are discussed and agreed before
completing the task. Once the task is
finished, learners assess their own work
against the criteria. As a follow-up,
learners set themselves goals for
improvement.

And what about reviewing

all this language?
Make sure that there are lots of
opportunities to practise. Give email
tasks for homework and ask your
learners to send them to you before the
next lesson.
To revise fixed phrases, give learners
the phrases with the words jumbled up
or with gaps.

Give email tasks

for homework and
ask your learners
to send them to
you before the
next lesson
You can reuse the tasks you did to
input the language, for example
frameworks and card sorts, to see what
the learners can remember.
Make sure that emailing is included
regularly as part of your lessons. You
can, for example, send emails (by
handing them out) at the beginning of
the lesson, explaining the aims and
giving instructions.

How can I ensure that

learning is taking place, that
the learners are transferring
this learning and improving
their performance back in
the workplace?
At the start of each lesson, ask your
learners to talk about the emails they
have sent or received that week and to
assess their performance.
Every few weeks, learners can bring
in examples of emails they have written
and compare them to examples
collected at the beginning of the course.
They and you should be able to see that
their emails are now clearer, more
accurate and easier to write! ETp

Jennifer Burkart and Caireen Sever work for

Linguarama Spracheninstitut, Dsseldorf,
Germany and Debbie Barton for Marcus
Evans Linguarama in England. They have a
wide experience of teaching business English,
including areas such as production, retail,
finance and human resources. As well as
teaching, all three are actively involved in
teacher training.
jenniferburkart@tiscali.de
caireen@sever.com
DHorsley@compuserve.com

www.etprofessional.com ENGLISH TEACHING professional Issue 48 January 2007

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