Sino-Finnish E-Mail Project:
A Teaching Tool for Tertiary Business English Writing
Course
By
WANG Meiling
Lecturer, Shandong University, China
Postgraduate, Vaasa University, Finland
8:00-8:30, Oct 24, 2004
Outline
• Objective: To explore the pedagogical benefits of an
international e-mail exchange for EFL Business
Writing course teaching
• Structure
1. Previous Research: Genesis of the project
2. Project Planning and Implementation
3. Post-project Feedback and Discussion
1. Genesis of the project
Previous studies
•
Mainstream Textbooks
•
Some studies on e-mail used in the corporate workplaces
•
Cultural competence and the teaching of biz commu
Englishes (international language), e.g. Euro-English,
China-English
2. Project design and implementation
•
Reference projects of international e-mail projects as a
teaching tool
•
Guidelines:
- case study
- genre pedagogy
•
Technical arrangements: curriculum conflict, wide different
student number, teacher’s role to coach
•
Implementation: Problems
Chinese company
• Profile: Zhimei Furniture Accessories is a wellknown Chinese supplier of badges, plates,
lanyards, and other line-of-business items. It
has been on the shortlist of successful Chinese
companies in the past 5 years. Its objective is to
explore new European markets, especially
Nordic countries.
Finnish company
• Profile: Pohjanmaan Kalustetehdas Oy is a small
family furniture factory (about 20 employees) in
Vaasa, Finland, and Mr Markku Mäkelä and his
wife are the joint owners of the company.
Pohjanmaan Kalustetehdas exports high quality
office furniture, e.g. sofas, tables, and swivel
chairs to Sweden.
Case brief
• Pohjanmaan Kalustetehdas Oy has closed a big deal
of 40 000 birch swivel chairs with its wellestablished Swedish Möbeldistributörerna Ab. To
satisfy such a large order, the Finnish company
makes an inquiry to the Chinese company Zhimei
Furniture Accessories for metallic plates. The
Chinese company, unfortunately, has only 20 000
items of the ordered plate in stock, but promises to
make efforts to meet the full supply on May 31,
2002.
Letter of request
• Say where you got the information from.
• Give some general information about your
business.
• State your general reason for writing.
• Request action.
• Close the letter formally.
• Add a salutation.
Specifics
• Date: February 2, 2002.
• Information source: from his Hong Kong business associate,
catalogue downloaded from the website.
• Inquiry: metallic plates to be attached to the furniture,
stamped the company’s logo and some text (attached),
item P-5843, “Smooth”, in copper, size 55*25 mm,
thickness 6 mm, interested in “Smooth” in other metal
colours as well, available in e.g. antique silver?
• Price: for 40 000 items?
• Urgent need: 10 000 items should be delivered by the end of
April the latest.
3. Post-project feedback and discussion
Techniques:
a small-scale questionnaire
commentary
Corpus of exchanged e-mail messages
Questionnaire
1．在交流的过程中，你认为自己需要强化的方面递减排
列的顺序依次是（
）。
1）贸易实务知识 2)专用术语或行话 3）英语表达能力
2． 在电子邮件往来中，您感受到文化因素对有效沟通
的影响是（
）。
1）没有意识到 2）有一点儿
3）很大
3．不同的目的决定了对应信函的主要内容，你认为常
见内容要点提示（即语体特征）对商务信函撰写学
习（
）。
1）没有必要
2）有必要
3) 非常需要
4． 如果你与芬兰伙伴中断交流，原因有可能是 （ ）。
1）不常读写电子邮件 2）对方不够积极
3) 自己对本国际项目失去兴趣
Summary
•
Pedagogical purpose behind the project
•
Undeniable pedagogical value of student-centered
teaching, situation-centered learning and process writing
•
Suggested strategies on how to improve the follow-up
project.
•
A tentative way of integrating international email
exchange to the content of business communication
teaching.
end
Thank you!