ABSTRACT Nowadays, technology plays an important role what has made people life more and more developing, especially in the 4.0 Revolution as today, it makes people’s demand and inevitability in using Internet increase faster. That is the reason why all aspects and fields need to apply technology and use it in operation. Business is not an exception, even this field cannot survive without Internet and technology. Communicating with customers is one of the most important activities in business and also at the peak.
However, some ways to contact with customers such as making directly phone call, chatting through Internet social media or sending message still have a lot of weaknesses. Thus, the application called business email, especially English business email is becoming very important. Nevertheless, there are still some difficulties that employees have to face during writing them. With this mind, this study is conducted.
The author will make an investigation with Import-Export staff in Minh Phu Trade and Technical limited company to find out the difficulties that they have to deal with in working time. i Luan van ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A completed research would not be done without any assistance. Therefore, the author who conducted this study gratefully gives acknowledgement to the support and motivation in the duration of doing this paper. First of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude and gratefulness to my supervisor Mrs.
Nguyen Thi Bich Ngoc who helped, supported and encouraged me enthusiastically while I conducted this graduation paper. Her kindly support and continuous advice went through the process of the completion. Her encouragement and comments had significantly broadened and bettered my work. Without her inspiration, motivation and instructions, the study would have been impossible to be done effectively.
Moreover, I would like to express my appreciation to the Import-Export staff as well as the manager of the department in Minh Phu Trade and Technical limited company who helped me to conduct data collection for the study to make it more detailed. Last but not least, I would like to state my special thanks to approve to my parents for their endless love, care, assistance and motivation to me for the whole of my life; my deeply thanks come to all my friends whose kindly help, care, motivation gave me strength and lift me up all the trouble for the rest of my life. ii Luan van TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT.ii TABLE OF CONTENTS.iii LIST OF FIGURES, CHARTS AND TABLES.v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS.vi CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY. Aims and objectives of the study.
Scope of the study. Data collection procedures. Data analysis methods. Organization of the study.7 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW.
Overview about EBE. Definition of EBE. Types of EBE. The application of EBE.
The purposes of EBE. The importance of EBE. Difficulties in writing English business emails and suggested solutions. Different language and different culture between two nations.
Overload in working (the pressure due to spending too much time on writing EBE).16 iii Luan van 2. Qualities of EBE. Some EBE samples.18 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH FINDINGS. The results of research and data analysis.
The results of questionnaire. The results of interview questions.Main findings and discussion. The difficulties that the IE staff in MP Trade and Technical LC have to face in writing EBE. Some possible solutions to improve IE staff’s skills in writing EBE.35 CHAPTER 4: RECOMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS.
How to deal with the different language and culture between two nations. Solutions for cultural context matters. Solutions for different time-zone. Solutions for judging observation of the reader to emails.
How to deal with the difficulty of overload in working. II iv Luan van LIST OF FIGURES, CHARTS AND TABLES FINGURES Figure 2.1: The concepts of low-context and high-context cultures.1: The staff’s experience(%).2: Main difficulties that the staff have to face in writing EBE (%).3: The staff’s observation about the difficulties in writing EBE(%).4: The staff’s observation about the importance of improving EBE writing skills (%).5: Some suggestions for the manager as well as the company to improve the staff’s EBE writing skills (%).1: Staff’s English level (%).2: The time for writing EBE a day of staff(%).3: The time for sending EBE of staff (%).4: The staff’s most difficult thing in writing EBE (%).5: The staff’s ways to improve EBE writing skills (%).30 v Luan van LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Item No. Abbreviation Full form 1 MP Minh Phu 2 LC Limited Company 3 IE Import-Export 4 EBE English business email vi Luan van CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY In this chapter, the author would give the overview of the study including seven parts related (rational, previous studies, aims and objectives, research subjects, scope of the study, research methodology and the organization of the study). Through these general points, it will be easier for the reader to catch and understand the study before moving to the main parts in this study.
Rationale First, as we can see, technology along with the impact of Internet has made people life more and more developing, especially in the 4.0 Revolution as today, it makes people’s demand and inevitability in using Internet increase faster. That is the reasons why all aspects and fields need to apply technology and use it in operation. Business is not an exception, even this field cannot survive without Internet and technology. Communicating with customer is one of the most important activities in business and also at the peak.
However, some ways to contact with customer such as making directly phone call, chatting through Internet social media or send message still have a lot of weaknesses. Calling directly for the customer makes employee of the company difficult to identify suitable time to make a phone and this is quite inconvenient. The other ways can make the business less professional and influence to the customer’s appreciation to the company. Thus, the application called business email is becoming a new trend.
Second, related to the importance of English in business, no one can deny huge influence of it to the existence and the development of the company. Together with the development of technology and international trade, Business English is also more popular than ever. Without English which is considered as the international language, the business will loss opportunity themselves to cooperate with foreign partners. It is a large barrier to the company’s development for the long term.
Especially with the department using English regularly, it becomes more and more important. MP Trade and Technical limited company sees this view and apply it in operation and management. Import- Export department is observed to use English 1 Luan van most in the business. They use business English in all assignments and activities, especially in communicating with foreign customers.
Moreover, using the international language helps to find out and attract potential foreigner and so chance to broaden customer group is respectively increased. Therefore, English business email appears to meet the demand and get more and more necessary. Last but not least, IE staff in MP Trade and Technical limited company are apparently quite inconvenient to approach the new method to contact with the potential customers. There are a lot of difficulties when they apply English business emails at work and these maybe prevent them from completing their assignment.
The most common difficulty in writing the English business emails at MP Trade and Technical limited company is language and cultural differences between two partners. They sometimes use a lot of words which are not suitable for English literary style such as not using professional greeting and professional closing, not having subject line in their emails and so on. Next, managing time to write and choosing suitable time to send emails are the other common difficulties with IE staff of the company. Therefore, based on difficulties related to English business email skills above, I would like to take “A study on difficulties in writing English business email of Import-Export staff in Minh Phu Trade and Technical limited company” as my research topic for my graduation paper.
Previous studies These backgrounds will assist readers to have understanding of some leading experts in the field of using English as the second language based on using English business email at the workplace. The review of previous studies will show remarkable data on staff’s performance as using the email to finish their assignments. There are some studies made by both foreign authors and Vietnamese authors: Aggoune Amina (2015) in “Business letters writing in business communication” showed case study of Intermat company. It offered an examination of business letter (BL) influencing recent and present practice in written communication; illustrated 2 Luan van the range of features that exist in BL at present in order to know what makes BL effective.
The author describe that English is the common corporate language used in Intermat company and there were mistakes and workers faced difficulties when they communicated and interacted with non-English speaking colleagues all over the world. Thus, this study helped to plan a letter and built principles of effective business letter writing. As Shafa Firda Nila (2017) said in “Problems in writing English business letter: errors and factors. (Third semester of Bina Bangsa Economics students majoring in Management and Accounting.)”, there are four classifications of errors: morphological, lexical, syntactic, and mechanical error.
These four of errors are divided into eight types: verb, noun, article, word choice, sentence structure, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. Also, there are three major factors that cause the errors: language transfer, overgeneralization, and context of learning. As the result, the author identified the problems of error found in English business letter writing and explained the factors that caused the problems. Related to language matter in correspondence, Shunhui Zha (2010) in “Analysis of Language Features in Business Correspondences” proved that there are four basic characteristics of vocabulary in business correspondences: using of terminology, polysemy, conciseness and formalness of vocabulary, special usage of general words.
From this point, the author determined structures and format of business correspondences and stylistic features of business correspondences. According to Vu Thi Huong Giang (2010) in “An analysis of some techniques to improve writing English business letters”, essential techniques in writing English business letters are your attitude, positive emphasis, tone, language. To have this conclusion, she gave theoretical background of definition, importance, purpose, business letter format and some types of business letter. She also found out some common mistakes in writing an English business letter.
With the developing of time, the studies on business emails are more popular both for English and other fields. Almost research proved the useful implementation of 3 Luan van business email in working environment and the way to improve writing skill. However, to develop the ability of creating an English business email, the staff need to understand about the difficulties that they have to face at first. So they can handle it and improve their writing skill.
Thus, this thesis will focus on the difficulties in writing English business email which is researched to IE staff in MP Trade and Technical limited company 1. Aims and objectives of the study This study aims to improve English business email writing skills for Import- Export staff in MP Trade and Technical LC based on respective problems they have. The writer expects that after this study, writing EBE of the staff become less difficult and then their writing skills will be improved and getting better. This study is made to answer two main questions: What are the difficulties that IE staff in MP Trade and Technical LC have to face when writing EBE? How have they and their manager done to improve their skills in writing EBE at workplace? 1.
Research subjects The research subject in this study is difficulties in writing English business emails of Import-Export staff in Minh Phu Trade and Technical limited company and possible solutions. The research topic contains two main parts: the difficulties and the solutions.