Although communicating in other electronic ways is becoming more common and important, emails are still necessary for most people, and a good email usually has a much better impact than a bad one. Although teaching “Dear Sir or Madam” and “Best regards” is easy and often enthusiastically embraced by students who can use it at work the next day, there can be issues with teaching the topic of emailing. This article looks at some such potential problems, and then how to solve them. For over 350 pages of photocopiable materials to teach writing emails, see https://www.usingenglish.com/e-books/teaching-emailing/.
Common problems with teaching emailing
Possible difficulties with classes on emailing include:
- Students not often coming across examples of the good emails that you teach them (because most native speakers don’t study how to email, most people are too rushed to email so well, young people often don’t know how to write them even in L1, people copying styles from chat/ instant messenger, etc)
- Suitable emailing varying wildly (depending on level of formality, function of the email, who you are writing to, the industry you work in, etc)
- Students coming across different opinions on the things that you teach (“Sincerely Yours” vs “Sincerely yours", etc)
- Students resisting any classes on writing because they think they can already do that and/ or did too much writing at school, and so want to learn how to speak (however bad their emails actually are)
- Students being embarrassed about studying what they consider to be quite a basic topic (when they wouldn’t automatically reject a class on something that is just as simple to write but seems more sophisticated like essays)
- Students having totally different levels of knowledge of English emailing (even when they have the same general level of English)
- Students going back to translating their emails from L1/ translating their emailing phrases from L1 straight after class
- Boredom with the topics, content of the emails, classroom activities, etc
- The useful phrases that you teach (“Just a quick note to say”) making their emails more difficult to understand by the non-native speakers who they communicate with
- Not being sure when it is and isn’t useful for students to switch to specifically English emailing norms like using first names, and fairly quickly switching to more friendly and casual styles
- Cultural differences in levels of formality, etc, that it is difficult for students to accept lower levels of formality even when they understand that it is common in internal emails in English
- Students perfectly happily communicating in non-English style English most of the time (e.g. between China and France), then causing misunderstandings when they use that style to contact other countries
To give a specific example related to some of the general points above, my students working in a Japanese-Korean joint venture were happily ending all emails with the phrase “Thank you for your cooperation”, not knowing that in English it is only used to end emails with commands/ demands/ instructions, so could be taken the wrong way in the rare occasions when they were emailing to people elsewhere.
How to avoid problems when teaching emailing
Solutions to issues with teaching emailing like those above include:
- Activities that provide lots of different good emailing models, e.g. a whole email exchange that gets more and more informal for students to put into order then analyse for good language, or emails to classify by function and level of formality
- Pointing out what is really important to change in their emails and what is less important but would still be good
- Distinguishing between what is agreed to be “right” (perhaps based on old-fashioned letter styles) and what is common in real life
- Distinguishing between what could be misunderstood, and what might cause a bad impression (because it is too casual, too formal when they should be friendly, etc)
- Making most classroom emailing practice actually speaking, by students saying what they will write at each stage (from “Dear…” to their name at the end each time), discussing what is good and bad about the model emails, etc
- Starting with a stage where students take part in typical email exchanges for them, then showing them what parts could be misunderstood or cause a bad impression in those realistic situations
- Showing that even native speakers make mistakes with emails, e.g. taking in an anonymised email from a native speaker to make more polite, to proofread, etc
- Showing the importance of the topic by covering kinds of emails that writers really need to get right, like job applications and responses to complaints
- Concentrating on things that could be confused (more than on errors), e.g. by getting students to say if phrases like “Thanks again” and “Thanks in advance” have the same or different meanings/ functions, or matching phrases with the same meanings but different levels of formality
- Always including a little useful language which none of the students will have seen before like “Once again, please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused” and “Sorry to write out of the blue, but…”
- Teaching both basic phrases and more difficult but still useful ones
- Covering language which will also be useful outside emails/ Linking emailing to other language points (e.g. “I’m writing to you in connection with…” for Present Continuous or prepositions)
- Providing a summary of the most useful language that students can easily use outside class, e.g. a Word document they can keep on their computer desktop and copy from
- Fun emailing activities like tricky roleplays (“Say no the first three times”), choosing roleplays with a coin or dice, and chain writing (writing the next line without being able to see what was written before, like Consequences)
- Including knowledge of emailing styles all around the world, not just in the US and UK