Suggested some solutions to improve business correspondence writing skill in Bluetech Joint Stock Company

Suggested some solutions to improve business correspondence writing skill in Bluetech Joint Stock Company Suggested some solutions to improve business correspondence writing skill in Bluetech Joint Stock Company Suggested some solutions to improve business correspondence writing skill in Bluetech Joint Stock Company Suggested some solutions to improve business correspondence writing skill in Bluetech Joint Stock Company Suggested some solutions to improve business correspondence writing skill in Bluetech Joint Stock Company Suggested some solutions to improve business correspondence writing skill in Bluetech Joint Stock Company Suggested some solutions to improve business correspondence writing skill in Bluetech Joint Stock Company Suggested some solutions to improve business correspondence writing skill in Bluetech Joint Stock Company Suggested some solutions to improve business correspondence writing skill in Bluetech Joint Stock Company Suggested some solutions to improve business correspondence writing skill in Bluetech Joint Stock Company Suggested some solutions to improve business correspondence writing skill in Bluetech Joint Stock Company Suggested some solutions to improve business correspondence writing skill in Bluetech Joint Stock Company Suggested some solutions to improve business correspondence writing skill in Bluetech Joint Stock Company Suggested some solutions to improve business correspondence writing skill in Bluetech Joint Stock Company Suggested some solutions to improve business correspondence writing skill in Bluetech Joint Stock Company Suggested some solutions to improve business correspondence writing skill in Bluetech Joint Stock Company Suggested some solutions to improve business correspondence writing skill in Bluetech Joint Stock Company Suggested some solutions to improve business correspondence writing skill in Bluetech Joint Stock Company

ABSTRACT Nowadays, it’s easy to see just how important English is around the world As the integration among countries became stronger and stronger, the need for information exchange between people also drastically increased As a result, it is a must for us to learn four English skills, namely listening skills, speaking skills, reading skills and writing skills Among these skills, writing, which is considered as the most challenging skill among four language skills, is very essential in business To be specific, in many companies, it is necessary for employees to recognize the importance of writing business correspondence and its requirement of dedication to practice However, writing skill in business letters of employees in companies is not really effective After four years of learning at the university, the researcher decided to choose topic " Suggested some solutions to improve business correspondence writing skill in Bluetech Joint Stock Company " with the purpose of researching on problems and causes that linked to staff’s business correspondence writing ability In order to achieve the aims, the researcher used two data collection instruments: questionnaires and interview The author also reviewed some theories regarding writing skill, and then analyzed the informant’s attitudes on their difficulties when writing letters The results from the study showed that employees were aware of the importance and the level of difficulty of writing business letters The findings from this thesis are hopefully of benefit not only for staffs in Bluetech., JSC but also others in different companies In general, improving business correspondence writing skills is a process that takes a lot of time and practices with the proper learning approach The author hopes this study would be useful for people who desire to better this skill, which is interesting but challenging i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT In this completion of this graduation paper, I would like to express my deepest and most sincere gratitude to many people for their invaluable help during the conduct of the research First and foremost, I would like to send my heartfelt gratitude towards my supervisor Ms Trần Thị Thu Hiền for her constructive and timely feedbacks as well as her constant and assistance which were decisive factors to the completion of the study Last but not least, I express my truly gratitude to all employees in Bluetech Company, especially in Import and Export department for their precious help and enthusiastic participation during the time the study was carried out ii TABLE OF CONTENTS 3.2 Data collection instruments 25 3.3 Procedure of data collection 25 iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS JSC Joint Stock Company iv CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1.1 Rationale of the study As the intergration of the world gradually have become more and more expansive, people from around the world with the urge to explore and interact with other culture have felt the need for a shared language to bring countries into contact It can be seen that English is supposed to be the dominant language all over the world and has never diminished but only increased To make use of English fluently, we need to master skills, which are listening, speaking, reading and writing Of these four skills, writing is thought to be an important factor, playing an extremely essential role in mastering the language Writing is considered an act of coding an idea, a thought, a reflection, a process of putting one's thoughts into words If the writer wants to convey his thought well, he needs to select and organize appropriate words Written text requires the writer to have a rich vocabulary, and to know how to build sentences coherently and then use good grammar, syntax, morphology of words to create a standard language product Specifically, in this study, we focus on business correspondence, which is a specific area of English writing skills Therefore, it needs specific requirements, professional knowledge and skills related to commercial English Recognizing the importance of English, the Vietnamese State, many organizations and companies in Vietnam have really concentrated on the development of English for employees at the company Bluetech, JSC where the researcher interned is not an exception Bluetech, JSC is a company specializing industrial valve equipment, it has developed for many years and is currently cooperating with a lot of foreign partners Therefore, the company always requires the employees to use English fluently Especially, Import and Export department is a hub for connecting with foreign partners and customers and dealing with document, contracts and emails from foreign partners However, during my internship, the author realized that the staff still encountered many shortcomings, so the business letters were not handled correctly, which caused lots of inconveniences to customers Wishing to help all employees in the company to find out solutions to improve this problem, as well as to build a solid foundation of writing business correspondence skills, the author decided to conduct this research with the title "Suggested some solutions to improve business correspondence writing skill in Import and Export department of the staff in Bluetech Joint Stock Company" 1.2 Previous studies In this section, the researcher will discuss a selection of previously published studies that shared the same perspectives and interests pertinent to the researcher's topics The purpose of this was to help the researcher and the reader acquire further insight into the critical aspects of the topic under discussion Here are some studies made by both foreign authors and Vietnamese authors in the followings: As stated by Yulia Viktorovna Sviatiuk, in ‘‘Business Correspondence Style and Format’’ showed that the idea cannot be conveyed to the reader unless it is presented logically The reader cannot follow the argument unless it has continuity, sequence of thought And, finally alongside with logic and style, not less attention and efforts should be given to a strong conclusion These five principles – the idea, logic, unity of thought, continuity, and conclusion – are the forces that hold the letter together and make it effective These principles are not optional rules or academic theories They are based on the actual experiences of men ever since they began to talk and write According to As Shafa Firda Nila (2017) said in ‘‘Problems in Writing English Business Letter: Errors and Factors’’, there are four classifications of errors: morphological, lexical, syntactic and mechanical error These four of error are divided into eight types: verb, noun, article, word choice, sentence structure, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization Also, there are three major factors that cause these errors: language transfer, overgeneralization, and context of learning As a result, the identified problems of error found in English business letter writing and explained the factors cause the problems In term of the style in this topic, Malyuga EN (2012) in ‘‘Professional Language in Formal and Business Style’’ said that formal business texts should have clear and unambiguous structure and the paragraphs of business letters tend to be short, some only a sentence long He also added that business letters are not read the same way as articles, reports, or other literature for detailed information or analysis, therefore, paragraphs over ten lines in business correspondence may require much concentration may not be read carefully or read at all With respect to language and grammar peculiarities in business letter, Gillaerts P (2008) in ‘‘Genre Variation in Business Letters: Linguistic Insights’’ proved that choosing positive language will make our letter well-turned Business writers and speakers recognize that positive, optimistic people are more open to new ideas and change than unenthusiastic people Therefore, it is better to find positive ways to express bad news in business letters Often, business letters must give bad news which should be conveyed in a tactful way to reduce the chances of ending business relations with the recipient of the bad news To convey bad news positively some words are better avoided (e.g cannot, forbid, fail, impossible, refuse, prohibit, restrict, deny, etc.) He also added that in business letter, the verb must always agree with subject No matter how many words separate the subject and the verb, make sure they agree Moreover compound subjects always take a plural verb (e.g The contract and financial statement are authorized by our CEO) Shuhui Zha (2010) also mentioned language matter in business correspondence 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 ‘‘Analysis of Some Techniques to Improve Writing English Business Letters’’, essential techniques in writing English business letters are your attitude, positive emphasis, tone and language To have this conclusion, she gave theoretical background of definition, importance, purpose, format and some types of a business letter She also found out some common mistakes in writing English business correspondence With the development of time, the studies on business correspondence are more omnipresent both for English and other fields Almost research proved the useful implementation of business email in working environment and the way to upgrade writing skills However, to develop the ability of creating an English business email, the staff needs to understand about the difficulties that they have to face at first Thus, this thesis will focus on the difficulties in writing commercial correspondence which is researched to the staff in Bluetch, JSC 1.3 Aims of the study This study is being conducted in the hope that it is possible to recognize the difficulties of the employees in writing business correspondence, so the writer will delve into the difficulties in practicing writing skills and the common writing mistakes, along with their attitude in self-study From the gained factual information, the researcher attempts to find some practical solutions which might improve writing business correspondence skills in general More specifically, the study is an attempt to answer the following questions: • What are the difficulties of the staff in practicing writing business correspondence? • What are the common mistakes the staff often encounter when writing business correspondence? • How is their attitude in self-study to improve writing business correspondence skills? • What are the solutions to improve writing business correspondence skills? 1.4 Research subject Business correspondence writing skills is one of the most essential skills at work because it plays a key role in processing transaction documents, contracts or building relationships with customers But even long-term employees are not immune to familiar mistakes while writing English, which is a problem worth concerning There doesn't seem to be much research on this specific field Most studies only focus on general English writing skills The researcher conduct study on difficulties of the staff in writing business correspondence in Bluetech., JSC That is the company where the author interned and the employees will be the direct research objects to carry out this research The results of the study will also serve the company directly, it will contribute to help the company have an effective orientation to improve the writing ability of all employees 1.5 Scope of the study This thesis studied the employees' reality of business correspondence writing ability in Bluetech Company Because the ultimate purpose of this research is to find out a better method to develop English letters writing skills for the employees in the company, the study focuses only on surveying the staff of Bluetch., JSC, then the author drew lessons for all office workers in general In addition, the research is going to specifically focus on the employees of Import and Export department, because these people have to deal with a range of English letters every day, they have a better English level than the rest of the company Moreover, they are accustomed to a high-pressure environment and always have to try their best to improve their English skills to achieve high working efficiency Secondly, the content of the questionnaire will be limited to research issues about obstacles while practicing writing business correspondence skills The researcher also suggests some practical solutions to solve the difficulties The researcher will therefore not deal with prob lems that are unrelated to these two research matters This is no exception to some of the interview questions The interview question is directed only at a small number of participants and concerns only the research issue mentioned above At the same time, due to time and references materials constraints, this study could not delve into all aspects of business correspondence, it only focuses on clarifying the difficulties that employees often face with and the way they selfstudy Discussions about the disadvantage of poor writing skills or other areas would not be found in this study 1.6 Research methodology Firstly, the design of this research was survey quantitative Survey designs are procedures in quantitative research in which investigators administer a survey, a sample to the entire population of people in order to describe the attitudes, opinion, behaviors, or characteristics of the population The second point is about the instrument of the research, it is the tool using to collect the data from the respondent of the research In this research, the first instrument that the researcher used is questionnaire The questionnaire was about the difficulties, the common errors as well as the way of self-study, and it was distributed to all the staff in the Bluetech Company Technique of Collecting Data was applied To collect the data, the researcher asked the students for giving their response by filling the questionnaire The answers in the questionnaire were the multiple choices It is refracted into A, B, C, D and E, the design of the answer is drawn as Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree Thirdly, another data gathering instrument which was used in this study was interview The purpose of the interview was to consolidate the information gathered through the questionnaire, so that the researcher could delve into the causes behind the difficulties in practicing writing at workplace as well as self-study at home Additionally, by giving the staff opportunity to report with their own words, the researcher could gain some insights of their understanding and attitudes toward writing skills After collecting the answers from the participants, the researcher will remove the inappropriate answers and then use excel to calculate the number into percentage Then, the calculated results will be presented as a chart showing the percentage of those who share the same answer 1.7 Organization of the study The study consists of four chapters as below: Chapter 1: Overview of the study This chapter provides a general overview of the study and is divided into sections, namely the rationale, the previous studies, the aims of the study, the The self-assessment of the staff on their writing skills was different from each other It could be seen that 19 was the number of the employees who self-assessed that they had writing skills at average level, which made up the highest percentage 41,3 % of the participants A lower percentage (28,3 %) was for the group in which the staff have good writing skills Whereas, only people, about 10,8%, had confidence to say that they were very good at writing business letters On the contrary, a few said that they had bad and even poor writing skills, respectively 13.1% and 6.5% of the respondents In sum, more than two thirds of the staffs had capability of writing at average or better level (approximately 80.4%), the number of those who rated themselves with good and very good level was quite considerable 3.5.3 The frequency of making mistakes in writing business correspondence Chart 3.6 The frequency of making mistakes in writing business correspondence It can be seen from chart 3.5, there were 10.8% of participants (5 people) answered that they very often or always made mistakes in writing business letters; a much higher percentage of 43.5% (20 people) was the rate of the group who often made writing mistake Followed were 23.9% of participants who sometimes made mistakes in writing English letters The number of the employees saying that they hardly made mistakes was 19.6%; and only one person, accounting for 2.2% said that she never made a mistake in her writing 30 When asked, Ms Ha My shared that she had long-term working experience in this field, so she was quite confident about her ability Furthermore, when writing to customers, she always checked carefully the grammar, tone, type of letter before sending 3.5.4 Common mistakes in writing business letter In order for the participants to make the best appropriate choices, the researcher listed 10 common mistakes while writing English text, based on the results, the researcher could give conclusion of which errors the employees in the company often encounter the most Table 3.5 Common mistakes in writing business letter No Kind of mistake 10 Grammar Verb Noun Punctuation Article Word choice Spelling Form of the letter Tone of the letter Jargon Number of choices (out of 46) 39 10 27 41 14 16 19 Percentage 84.8 % 21.2 % 13.1 % 58.7 % 6.5 % 89.1 % 30.4 % 34.9 % 41.3 % 19.7 % In the table above, the respondents could choose any answers which they supposed to be the common mistakes in writing business letters It could be obviously seen that, there were two most prominent types of errors selected by Bluetech employees: grammatical error and word choice error In particular, the higher proportion was word choice error Up to 41 people out of 46 people, accounting for about 89.1% of the voted for word choice error Grammar error represented 84.8% of the staff (39 people) Followed were punctuation errors which was voted by 27 people, accounting for about 58.7% of the total participants Errors of tone, type of letter and spelling also accounted for a significant proportion, respectively 41.3%, 34.9% and 30.4% The remaining errors were arranged in a lower order as follows: verbs, jargon, nouns and articles 31 3.6 Research question 3: How is their attitude in self-study to improve writing business correspondence skills? 3.6.1 Employees’ level of interest in writing business correspondence With a view to explore the self-study attitude of the employees in the company, the researcher posed a related question of what extent the employees like to write in English If the employees wanted to gain a good attitude of self-study, they must have a certain interest in writing As a result, they can easily maintain their self-training for a long time Chart 3.7 Employees’ level of interest in writing business correspondence According to the chart above, it can be seen that the majority of the staff had a neutral idea about writing business letters Specifically, among 46 members, 19 stated that their level of interest in writing commercial letters was so-so, which accounted for 41,3 % of the employees Followed were 28,3 % of the participants like writing English quite a lot The number of the staff who did not really enjoy this skill constituted 15,2 % While only members, occupying 8,7 % of the population were deeply interested in English writing, 6,3 % had an opposite idea that they were not interested in writing at all In short, business correspondence writing skills was not really appeal to the majority of the IQL employees 32 3.6.2 The importance of self-study in improving writing skills Chart 3.8 The importance of self-study in improving writing skills The above chart showed the information about the staff’s assessment toward self-study attitude First to mention, the number of opinions agreeing on the importance of self-study was the highest, approximately 39.1% of the respondents (18 people) In addition, 10 employees strongly agreed that self-study deeply affected their writing skills, accounting for about 21.2% Meanwhile, 16 employees (34.7%) gave neutral opinions, and employees (4.3%) disagreed about the importance of self-training Specially, no one strongly disagreed to this point 3.6.3 Employees’ frequency of self-practice with writing business correspondence Chart 3.9 Participants’ frequency of self-practice with writing business correspondence From the information of the chart 3.8, the percentage of employees who only occasionally self-practice was the highest, accounting for 18 people out of 46 people, approximately 39.1% The number of people who sometimes practicing English writing rank the second position, occupying 23.9% (11 people) This was 33 followed by 17.5%, representing for employees usually self-practiced writing letters of business Only people (6.5%) always (every day) practiced writing and the double number of people never self-studied 3.7 Research question : How to deal with difficulties in writing business correspondence? Table 3.6 Employees’ strategies to handle with difficulties in business correspondence writing Strategies a, Using Google Translate b, Search on Google c, Ask for co-worker’s help d, Using templates e, Get a friend as an ‘English Vote (%) Vote (%) Vote (%) Vote (%) Vote 0% 2.2 % 6.5 % 17.4 % 12 2.2 % 8.7 % 13.0 % 13 28.3 % 8.7 % 6.5 % 10 21.7 % 14 30.4 % 17 19.6 % 15 32.6 % 11 23.9 % 10 21.7 % 32 69.5 % 23 50 % 16 34.7 % 2.2 % (%) 26.1 % 19.6 % 40.0 % 13.0 % 4.3 % expert’ (such as a good English student, a English teacher,…) The above table clearly showed how Bluetech employees did to cope with difficulties when they write business correspondence The way used the most was using Google Translate (69.5% of the staff - 32 members) They thought this was the fastest way to transfer from one language to another The second most applicable way was searching information on Google, which was voted by the 50% of the participants as the highest application level The third option of the staff was asking their co-workers, 34.7% of the employees supposed that was the way they use a lot Not many employees thought that this method was useful, most members (30.4%) chose level for this way Finally, 26.1% of employees thought that this was the least applicable way because there were so many different sources of information to support them in supplement knowledge about business correspondence 34 Rank CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 4.1 Suggestions to improve business correspondence writing skills of the staff in Bluetech Company 4.1.1 Suggestions for the company First of all, the company should organize some regular training courses of writing business correspondence in English for the entire staffs, especially those in Import and Export Department In addition, the general director might create plan to associate with English centers in Hanoi to design some trading English courses for employees Accordingly, the lessons focus on teaching the skills of writing business correspondences and drafting contracts in English This helps them to broaden a wealth of knowledge about the importance of business letters in their work as well as ways to write accurately As a result, the company can make an impression on foreign guests Secondly, the company can arrange for conferences on instructing how to write business correspondence in English correctly, in which employees are taught 12 main parts including in the letter Besides, general director might encourage his staffs to take part in the conferences on sharing experiences in writing skill held by domestic and foreign organizations As a result, some mistakes can be eliminated Furthermore, recruitment criteria of the company should be changed, which includes the requirement for using English proficiently and accurately The process of recruiting, interviewing should have clear procedures to evaluate correctly English ability of staffs Last but not least, the company should increase support for individuals who have ability to write business letters in English well in the workplace in finance and improve working conditions The company also needs to apply more policies to encourage English learning by offering higher salaries or good perks to all officers 4.1.2 Suggestions for the staff It is obvious that not only the company takes actions but the employees also need to if they want to correct their mistakes 35 Firstly, each individual of the department should follow strategies that are designed in order to advance writing skill by the company For example, joining English classes of writing business correspondences in English has profound impacts on their improvement In addition, because employees usually suffer from heavy workload, they not have enough time to join English classes or conferences They can create groups on social network such as Facebook or Skype, in which they can chat to their co-workers in English about work and life in a bid to enhance their English skills Secondly, the employees should take the initiative in learning abbreviations and terms A large number of abbreviations as well as terminology are normally used in business transactions If an employee does not understand the meaning of words used in the letters, it will be difficult for him to reply partners Thirdly, for employees, they also should arm themselves with background knowledge of business, experience and be more responsible in learning writing skill They can find out the most effective method of learning for themselves 4.2 Limitations of the study Despite the researcher’s effort in validating the methodology of the study and collect as well as analyze the data with careful consideration, the study is still subject to several limitations First of all, due to the objective condition, the time duration of the intervention was limited in a few weeks Hence, the researcher has decided to focus on the things that are easy to describe, such as the attitudes of employees and their difficulties when writing business correspondence Because the researcher is lack of time and limited knowledge, there is a considerable gap for future research into those more complicated issues Second, the target subjects of the study are just limited to 46 employees in the company Third, due to the shortage of knowledge and experience in doing research, the study cannot deal with other factors relating to the topic such as writing materials or benefits of writing skills 36 4.3 Recommendations The limitation and scope of the study leave the gaps for other researches in the field of writing business correspondence to fill in First, the study was carried out with the employees in Bluetech company, therefore, for the further studies, to get better results, the researcher should invite more participants and the data collection method Second, the present study just focused on the common mistakes in writing business letters, so a further research can investigate other fields such as strategies to learn business correspondence 37 CONCLUSION In the course of conducting research, the researcher focused particular attention to a variety of business correspondence issues with a view to gaining a multi-dimensional, comprehensive view of the research topic With the support from 46 employees, the researcher successfully obtained valuable information about the current situation of writing business correspondence ability of the staff through questionnaires and interview questions Research findings indicated that most employees were conscious of the significance of business correspondence writing ability but several confusing problems still hampered their learning The difficulties were differences in culture and language, difficulty in rounding up vocabulary and terminology, difficulty in selecting letter types, and huge workload To improve English writing skills, employees should change their writing strategies, as well as reinforce their knowledge of culture, vocabulary, grammar, etc In addition, the company should also focus on encouraging employees, opening more programs to strengthen writing skills for employees Thankfully, the process of carrying out this study really benefits the researcher to accumulate valuable experiences on the path of developing his own foreign language learning 38 REFERENCES https://www.instructionalsolutions.com/blog/what-is-business-english 2.http://s3.amazonaws.com/Edcanvas/8570/local/BC2%20Unit %20%202%20Principles%20of%20effective%20communication.pdf https://zim.vn/thu-tin-thuong-mai-tieng-anh-va-mot-so-dieu-can-chu-y/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_English Analysis of discourse of Vietnamese commercial correspondence - Vuong Thi Kim Thanh (2009) Comparing English commercial correspondence with Vietnamese - ncs Trinh Ngoc Thanh (2007) Genre Variation in Business Letters: Second Printing (Linguistic Insights) Paperback – June 16, 2008 ‘Professional Language in Formal and Business Style’’ , Malyuga EN (2012) ‘‘Problems in Writing English Business Letter: Errors and Factors’’, Shafa Firda Nila (2017) 10 ‘‘Business Correspondence Style and Format’’ Yulia Viktorovna Sviatiuk (2015) 11 ‘‘Analysis of Some Techniques to Improve Writing English Business Letters’’, Vu Thi Huong Giang (2010) 12.https://www.toppr.com/guides/business-communication-and-ethics/businesscorrespondence/meaning-and-importance-of-business correspondence#:~:text=It%20helps%20in%20maintaining %20the,organization%20more%20clear%20and%20precise 13 https://work.chron.com/10-types-business-letters-9438.html 14.https://www.vedantu.com/commerce/meaning-and-importance-of-businesscorrespondence 15 https://englishsherpa.com/reading-writing/business-letters 16 https://www.doctemplates.net/business-letter-writing-mistakes/ 17 https://foundersguide.com/writing-business-letters/ 18.https://www.freelancewriting.com/business-writing/business-writing-mistakes/ 19.https://www.thebalancecareers.com/how-to-format-a-business-letter-2062540 20.https://www.thebalancecareers.com/how-to-format-a-business-letter-2062540 I 21 https://www.xerox.com/en-us/small-business/tips/business-letter 22.https://www.fluentu.com/blog/business-english/writing-a-business-letter-inenglish/ 23.https://www.toppr.com/guides/business-communication-and-ethics/businesscorrespondence/meaning-and-importance-of-business-correspondence 24 https://www.moneycrashers.com/improve-business-writing-skills/ 25 https://hivelife.com/improve-business-writing/ 26 https://www.writing-skills.com/how-to-improve-your-business-writing II SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE Dear Bluetech Company’s staff, I am doing a survey serving my graduation thesis with the topic: “Suggested solutions to improve business correspondence writing skill for Import and Export Department Staff in Bluetech Viet Nam Import and Export Joint Stock Company” I would like to ask for your help with this questionnaire to collect necessary data which play an extremely important role for my graduation paper There would be no right or wrong answer, each of your answer will be a valuable basis for the analysis process Therefore, I hope that you would answer as sincerely as possible Part A: Personal information What is your name? Your department …………………………………………………… Your gender: a Male b Female How long have you been learning English? (Tick out the best answer) a 1-3 years b 4-6 years c 7-9 years d More than years Your number of years you have been working ……………………… Part B: Common mistakes you make when writing business correspondence a b c d e Business correspondence writing skills are important at work Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree What is your level of writing business correspondence? (selfassessment) a Very good b Good c Average d Bad e Poor What are the most common errors you make when writing business letter? III a b c d e a b c d Grammar error f Word choice error Verb error g Spelling error Noun error h Form of the letter Punctuation error i Jargon error Article error j Tone of the letter How often you make mistakes in writing business correspondence? Very often Often Sometimes Hardly e Never Part C: Your attitude in self-study to improve writing business correspondence skills 10 How much you like writing in English? (Circle the number that presents your level of interest) Not at all Very much 11 Self-study is important for improving writing skills a Strongly disagree b Disagree c Neutral d Agree e Strongly agree 12 How often you self-practice writing business correspondence? a Never b Only occasionally (about once a month) c Sometimes (about once a week) d Usually (2-3 times a week) e Always (everyday) Part D: Solutions to improve difficulties in writing business correspondence 13 What you often when getting difficulties in writing business correspondence? (Circle the number that can best describe your writing strategies) Never Occasionally Sometimes a, Using templates b, Search on Google c, Ask for co-worker’s help Usually 1 IV 2 Always 3 4 5 d, Get a friend as an ‘English expert’ (such as a good English student, a English teacher,) e, Using Google Translate V 5 INTERVIEW QUESTIONS What are the difficulties that you face up with when learning how to write business correspondence? What causes lead to those problems? What should you to enhance your writing skills? What strategies you think Bluetech Company should to improve staff’s writing skills? VI ... writing business correspondence? • How is their attitude in self-study to improve writing business correspondence skills? • What are the solutions to improve writing business correspondence skills?... https://www.moneycrashers.com /improve- business- writing- skills/ 25 https://hivelife.com /improve- business- writing/ 26 https://www .writing- skills.com/how -to- improve- your -business- writing II SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE Dear Bluetech. .. the title "Suggested some solutions to improve business correspondence writing skill in Import and Export department of the staff in Bluetech Joint Stock Company" 1.2 Previous studies In this section,