ABSTRACT This study aims at improving writing English enquiry letters and reply to enquiry letters in business correspondence for sale staffs of Poong Shin Vina Ltd Company. The writer try to analyze how English enquiry letters and reply to enquiry letters to be written by sale staffs, to be more specific what are common mistakes are being made by sale staffs at the company. The result indicates that all staffs in Sale Department still have trouble in writing English these letters. There are still many errors in content, lexis and grammar when staffs writing.
The study arrives at a conclusion that sale staffs should be improve about writing English letters background by reading materials in Internet and Academic book. i Luan van ACKNOWLEDGMENT First of all, I would like to express my deep gratitude to all the lecturers at English Department- Thuong Mai University for their valuable lessons which laid the foundation for my thesis. I would like to show my deep gratitude to Mrs Vu Thi Thu Trang- the supervisor who has been giving guidance, materials and invaluable suggestion for me to complete the study timely. Thanks for her ever-enthusiasm, responsibility and devotion.
On this occasion, I wish to express my very sincere thanks to all sale staffs in Poong Shin Vina Ltd Company for their co-operation and support my data collection, providing me with insights into writing English enquiry letters and reply to enquiry letters. At last, I would like to extend my many thanks to my family and my friends for their constant assistance and encouragement during the time I carry out the study. Ha Noi, 22 April 2018 Tran Thi Ngoc ii Luan van TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT.ii TABLE OF CONTENTS.iii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES. Aims of the study.
Scope of the study. Organization of the study. Overview on writing. Definition of writing.
Types of writing. Common errors in writing. Overviewing on business correspondence. Importance of business correspondence.
Parts of a business correspondence. Types of business correspondence. Types of enquiry letter. Functions of enquiry letter.
Format of enquiry letter. Reply to enquiry letter. Functions of reply to enquiry letter.21 iii Luan van 2. Format of a reply to enquiry letter.21 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH FINDING.
The frequency of making mistakes. Types of mistakes. Mistakes in content. RECOMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS.
Some suggestions to all sale staffs for writing english enquiry letters and reply to enquiry letters. Content of the letters. Lexical of the letters. Grammatical of the letters.
Some recommendary sources.37 REFERENCE APPENDIX iv Luan van LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS pp pages số trang C.F Cost, Insurance, Freight Tiền hàng, Bảo hiểm, Cước phí e.g For example ví dụ MA Master of Arts thạc sĩ văn chương PhD Doctor of physolophy tiến sĩ v Luan van LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES List of figures Chart 3. The frequency of making mistakes. Types of mistakes. Types of mistakes in content.
Types of lexical mistakes. Types of grammatical mistakes.31 vi Luan van CHAPTER 1. Rationale The rapid development of the global economy leads more and more the large and small international trade cooperation and business negotiation happened. As the result of this, the economic with no barriers can not be avoided in all country.
After joining the World Trade Organization, Vietnam's economic status was enhanced. With the acceleration of world economic integration and rapid development of international trade, business correspondence is an important tool for trade transaction. With the globalization of the economy, the strengthening of international trade cooperation, business correspondence for individual companies is dispensable to pass along all the necessary detailed information. Business correspondence is a great solution for the development of supply and demand side of the drawbacks of asymmetric information, making all the information timely and effective delivery in every corner of the world, in various countries and in numerous companies.
Poongshin Vina Ltd is the foreign joint venture company, has co-operation with other foreign enterprises to exchange goods, so business correspondence is essential and every employees must be have a business correspondence writing skill, especially writing enquiry letters and reply to enquiry letters. But there is fact that not all employees in company are able to write an English letters successfully due to the limitation of knowlegde. Write a good letter means the staffs use a special language in appropriate format and clear content to persuade the receivers and make a good impression to them. Writing a good English business letter is not really easy.
There are many types of business correspondence and almost staffs do not know how to write it correctly. People sometimes make mistake in their letters without being aware about it, which becomes a common problem to employees in Poong Shin Vina Ltd. Realizing the problem, I decided to carry out “the study on improving writing English enquiry letters and reply to enquiry letters in business correspondence for sale staffs of Poong Shin Vina Ltd Company” to help people deeply understand about these types of letter with the hope that they can write an English business letter better. Previous studies Nowaday, writing an English enquiry letters and rely to enquiry letters is so important for all company, especially companies have foreign partners, so reseaching how to write these letter successfully is essential.
In fact, many people have studied and written about this area, such as: Kenneth Beare ( 1975) he wrote a study about “learn to write an enquiry response business letter”. In the paper, he mentioned some aspects of the enquiry response business letter: definition, important language to remember when you write a rely to enquiry letter and he also gave example letter. His study was updated in ThoughtCo.- the world’s largest education resouse because all information was given quite sufficient and exactly. However, he didn’t mention about the function and parts of the enquiry response business letter.
In Business Correspondence ( 1956) of J Thomas, University of Michigan, he wrote about the definition and the way to write an enquiry letter but did not mention about the reason why we write it, what’s the section of this letter and give the example about it. “The importance of writing English enquiry letters and reply to enquiry letters” (2004)- Khaled Alshare and Nihan Hindi explored the role of enquiry letters and reply to enquiry letters for business staffs. The results of the study showed that forty-five percent of informants indicated business staffs were required to writing English enquiry letters and reply to enquiry letters for working. Staffs and instructors agreed that critical objectives of writing English enquiry letters and reply to enquiry letters need to be improved.
So, in my study, I will carry out a study about both enquiry letter and reply to enquiry letter with the most complete information include definition, the function, the reason to write, the parts and example of these letters. Moreover, I will give the things to keep in mind when writing. Aims of the study The aims of the study is to help all sale staffs in PoongShin Vina Ltd Company become more professional when writing English enquiry letters and reply to enquiry letters. It includes the following objectives: - Giving literature review of definition, writing process and functions of letters - Providing the basic and essential knowledge about the format, style language used in enquiry letter and reply to enquiry letter.
- Finding out some common errors in writing English enquiry letter and reply to enquiry letter to help people in the company avoid making those mistakes and have a good skill in writing English letters. Research subjects There are many types of business correspondence such as: - Business Enquiry Letter - Quotation Letter ( reply to enquiry) - Order Letter - Complaint Letter - Recovery Letter However, the researcher can study on enquiry letter and reply to enquiry letter because of the limitation of time and knowledge and these letters are commonly used by sale staffs in PoongShin Vina Ltd Company. A survey with twelve sale staffs in Sale Department has been conducted. The researcher choose all sale staffs as participants because they often take responsible in writing business letters and they always connect company with other important partners.
Besides, the reseacher would like to see what common mistakes when they writing English enquiry letters and reply to enquiry letters and the difficulty that they face. Scope of the study This study will focus on writing English enquiry letter and reply to enquiry of all sale staff in Poong Shin Vina Ltd Company who are responsible for dealing with foreign partners. Reseach methodology To finish this graduation paper, I search and collect primary data from different reference books related to writing English enquiry and reply to enquiry and from the websites on the internet. Besides, questionaire and interviews have been used as the main sources for data collection.
Firstly, by using questionaires the researcher can obtain data quantitively, which later on will assist the study with persuasive figures concerning the investigated issues. And by using interviews, the researcher could have more in-depth information. Before the interview, the researcher had prepared a set of questions. Additionally, some possible follow-up questiones were also prepared ( for the interview questions, refer to appendices) The steps of the study were as follows: 1.
Piloting the questionaires for sale staffs 2. Delivering and gathering back the questionaires 3. Conducting interviews with the selected sale staffs 4. Analyzing the collected data and dicussing the findings 5.
Organization of the study Apart from acknowledgement, table of content,conclusion, reference and appendix, this study includes four main chapter: Overview of the study, Literature review, Reseach findings and Recommendations and suggestion: - Chapter One: introduces the problem, gives an overview about the study and describes the needs of writing English enquiry letter and reply to enquiry letter in business. This chapter also discusses the rationale, previous studies, the aims of the study, research subjects, the scope of the study, research methodology and organization of the study. 4 Luan van - Chapter Two: covers the literature review in the theory background. Moreover, this chapter represents relevant information for understanding the study more.
- Chapter Three: analysis of written by some information about subject, data collection instruments and procedures - Chapter Four: gives some suggestions to improve the writing English enquiry letter and reply to enquiry letter for sale staffs of Poong Shin Vina. 5 Luan van CHAPTER 2. Overview on writing 2. Definition of writing Writing has been with us for several thousand years and nowaday it becomes more important than ever.
It is a skill that people in all parts of life use every day. A teacher, for example, has to write lectures, a chief accountant has to write reports to general director every month. As a student, I have a pile of writing tasks: essays, assignments, internship report, graduation study, etc. So, in order to give the answer to the question “What is writing”, many people say that they know what writing is but they cannot find the right words to define it.
Meanwhile, there are a lot of authors giving the definitions of writing on their own viewpoints as follows: - Writing is a set of visible or tactile signs used to represent units of language in a systematic way, with the purpose of recording messages which can be retrieved by everyone who knows the language in question and the rules by virtue of which its units are encoded in the writing system (Daniels, Peter T. & Bright, William, The world's writing systems, P.3 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996) - Writing is a system of more or less permanent marks used to represent an utterance in such a way that it can be recovered more or less exactly without the intervention of the utterer (Daniels, Peter T. & Bright, William, The world's writing systems, P.3 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996) In short, different authors define the term writing in different ways.