A study on difficulties in learning Business Correspondence of thirdyear students at English Faculty, Thuongmai University

A study on difficulties in learning Business Correspondence of thirdyear students at English Faculty, Thuongmai University A study on difficulties in learning Business Correspondence of thirdyear students at English Faculty, Thuongmai University A study on difficulties in learning Business Correspondence of thirdyear students at English Faculty, Thuongmai University A study on difficulties in learning Business Correspondence of thirdyear students at English Faculty, Thuongmai University A study on difficulties in learning Business Correspondence of thirdyear students at English Faculty, Thuongmai University A study on difficulties in learning Business Correspondence of thirdyear students at English Faculty, Thuongmai University A study on difficulties in learning Business Correspondence of thirdyear students at English Faculty, Thuongmai University

THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY ENGLISH FACULTY GRADUATION PAPER TOPIC: A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING BUSINESS CORRESPONDENCE OF THIRD-YEAR STUDENTS AT ENGLISH FACULTY, THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY Supervisor : Mrs Nguyen Bich Hong, M.A Student : Le Thi Dieu Linh Class : K52N5 Student code : 16D170306 Hanoi - 2019 Hanoi - 2019 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In the completion of this graduation paper, I have received valuable supports and idea contributions from my teachers, my family and friends First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Mrs Nguyen Bich Hong, M.A for her gracious assistance, friendly support, thoughtful advice, valuable comments, patience and warm encouragement throughout my study Without her whole-hearted help, my graduation paper would not have been completed Also, I am very grateful to all the teachers at the English Faculty of Thuongmai University for their interesting and useful lectures during four years which have built in me valid knowledge and necessary skills for my fulfillment of this paper The completion of this study would not have been possible without the cooperation from third-year English major students at Thuongmai University who participated in the study I am very grateful to all of them for providing useful information for the analysis of this study Last but not least, I would like to give my sincerely thanks to my family and my friends who always give me the encouragement and inspiration which helps me overcome difficulties to fulfill my graduation paper Eventually, this research has been fulfilled to the best of my knowledge, however, mistakes and shortcomings are unavoidable Therefore, I would be grateful if I receive appreciated comments and suggestions from readers for the perfection of this graduation paper Hanoi, December 3, 2019 Student Le Thi Dieu Linh ABSTRACT Business Correspondence plays an important role, it is also a compulsory subject at university In this study, the author would attempt to investigate the difficulties in learning Business Correspondence of third-year English major students at TMU, which consist of problems from learners (attitude toward learning this subject), teachers (teaching methods) and curriculum (the completeness and perfection) Besides, the errors in business letters written by students are also detected Based on data collected by questionnaires and accumulating some business letters of students, the author would like to analyse so as to give objective results performed in charts and tables particularly and the factors affecting learning Business Correspondence Then, the research would like to give some recommendations and suggestions to deal with the difficulties in learning this subject Hopefully, this study is a useful reference source for students, who want to improve their learning Business Correspondence and writing business letters skill as well as enhance their academic results TABLE CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i ABSTRACT ii TABLE CONTENTS iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS v LIST OF IMAGES, TABLES AND CHARTS vi CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1.1 Rationale 1.2 Previous studies 1.3 Aims of the study 1.4 Research subjects 1.5 Scope of study 1.6 Research methodology 1.7 Organization of the study CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .6 2.1 Background knowledge of Business Correspondence 2.1.1 Meaning of Business Correspondence 2.1.2 Importance of Business Correspondence 2.1.4 Types of Business Correspondence .8 2.1.5 Parts and form of a business letter 2.1.6 Several types of business letters 14 2.2 Points to remember when writing a bussiness letter 15 2.3 Essential qualities of business letters 16 2.3.1 Inner quality 16 2.3.1 Outer quality 18 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH FINDINGS 20 3.1 Data analysis 20 3.1.1 Data collected by the questionnaires 20 3.1.2 Data collected by accumulating students’ bussnines letters 30 3.2 Discussion about difficulties of the students in learning Business Correspondence 33 CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS .35 4.1 Recommendations 35 4.1.1 To students 35 4.1.2 To teachers 37 4.1.3 To the university 38 4.2 The limitations of the study 39 4.3 Suggestions for further studies .39 CONCLUSION 41 REFERENCES 42 APPENDIX I LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Word Meaning in English Meaning in Vietnamese M.A Master of Arts Thạc si TMU Thuong Mai university Đại học Thương Mại LIST OF IMAGES, TABLES AND CHARTS Table 2.1 Types of Business Correspondence .8 Table 3.1 The evaluation of students about completeness of content in curriculum and documents compiled by English Faculty 25 Table 3.2 The evaluation of students about missing parts of Business Correspondence documents 25 Table 3.3 The evaluation of students on the difficulties in writing several types of business letter 27 Table 3.4 Mistakes the students often make when they write business letters 31 Chart 3.1 Amount of time students spend doing Business Correspondence homework and preparing the new lessons .21 Chart 3.2 Students’ activities in free time .22 Chart 3.3 The frequency of finishing homework and preparing new lessons .23 Chart 3.4 Writing activities according to teacher’s control in Business Correspondence classes 24 Chart 3.5 The frequency of researching from other sources of Business Correspondence documents 26 Chart 3.6 The influence of curriculum and documents on students’ result in learning Business Correspondence 30 Image 2.1 Basic business letter format 13 CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1.1 Rationale In the current period of economic integration, English is an important tool in communication and information exchange, especially business English The role of business English is becoming increasingly important for us This is one of the indispensable factors in the current process of globalization, which helps trade with foreign countries increase In particular, the use of business correspondence skills in English is a matter of concern In fact, Business Correspondence is a compulsory subject for the third-year students of English Faculty at Thuongmai University Learning how to write a commercial English letter requires more skills than learning how to write a regular English letter Students need to master not only the forms and organization of a commercial letter, but also the appropriate style and intonation for the writing The way of writing a commercial correspondence is usually more formal and than the regular correspondence, so writers have to keep in mind the general structure and apply it appropriately for each type of letter or email It is also a difficult problem that students deal with when learning Business Correspondence Besides, fact also shows that almost students have not known how to learn this subject well Therefore, in order to study this problem in depth, I have conducted the research entitled: “A study on difficulties in learning Business Correspondence of third-year students at English Faculty, Thuongmai University” Hopefully, this study will help students understand deeply the issues that they have not noticed before and suggest some solutions to solve the problems and help them improve their learning Business Correspondence I also hope this research will help them to enhance their academic results and augment their using business correspondence skill for their future jobs 1.2 Previous studies In the world, there are many business correspondence documents as well as many studies related to business correspondence They are most commonly found in universities In 2014, Zi Yu (School of Foreign Languages China Jiliang University Hangzhou, China) and Yuyang Fu (School of Communication Simon Fraser University Vancouver, Canada) had a research paper on the subject, with the title “A Study on the Characteristics and Writing Principles of Business Correspondence” This paper takes “3C” principles, a standard of a good business correspondence generally accepted in academic field and British linguist G.N Leech’s famous politeness principles as a theoretical background, analyzing the characteristics of the language used in BC, respectively in terms of its lexical characteristic and its structural characteristics in sentences Then, in order to batter grasp the key to write a successful business correspondence, some main writing principle like polite principle will be specifically analyzed The study came to a conclusion “The principles for BC writing are to stylize the letter with the above characteristics “You attitude” in mind goes first, followed by attention on tactful sentences Besides, interrogative sentences could be used to save you from embarrassment when inevitably being negative The last but not the least, the update terms could not be ignored with rapid development of business environment and society” In 2014, Shafa Firda Nila (Management and Accounting, Indonesia) implemented the study “Problems in writing English business letter: Errors and Factors” In this study, “the data were collected from the English business letter written by third semester of Bina Bangsa Economics students majoring in Management and Accounting The students were asked to respond a complaint letter from a customer of the given situation The error category is based on Ferris and Hedgcock model (2005) The researcher identified the problems of error found in the letters and explained the factors that caused the problems to draw the conclusion” In addition to the research of famous scholars over the world, in Vietnam, there were also many studies related to this issue “An analysis of some techniques to improve writing English business letters” by Vu Thi Huong Giang (2010 - Foreign Language Department of Hai Phong Private University) The study aimed to give theoretical background of definition, importance, purpose, business letter format and some types of business letter Besides, it found out some common mistakes in writing an English business letter Then the author conducted an analysis of the results and suggested some techniques in order to have good will in writing English business letter “A study on difficulties on writing business correspondence for major English students of Foreign Languages Faculty of Academy of Finance” by Dam Hong Loan (Foreign Languages Faculty of Academy of Finance) The minor thesis designed a study on on difficulties on writing business correspondence for major English students of Foreign Languages Faculty of Academy of Finance Further more, the ambition of this thesis is to actively, effectively and directly contribute to the further research, development and implementation of writing business correspondence The thesis can be seen as overall picture that helps students to have a general view of fundamental things about the skill and to explore the writing business correspondence skill in other novices’ point of veiw In short, there were several studies related to business correspondence, but most have only dealt with the principle of writing and using commercial letters as well as difficulties in writing a business letter or email In the above studies, the writers have not given an overview of the difficulties that students encounter when Lastly, it is clear that the number of letters having mechanical error is (25%) Mechanical error is a type of error which deals with spelling, punctuation, and capitalization It is believed that in many cases, mechanical errors are the consequence of quick writing where the focus is on the content instead of the form Spelling error is an error deals with the error in spelling the word, the punctuation error is mostly in terms of using commas and periods, and the capitalization is found that the students haveless attention to the rule of using capital letter to write a name of a person or a company and to begin a sentence b, Factors of errors According to the types of error that have been identified, the author discovery three major factors why the errors occur The first factor is language transfer It is related to the ability of students in transferring from their native language into foreign language Language transfer can be positive if students can write the correct sentence in English It can be said that language transfer problem deals with interlingual interference Some non-native speakers of English language usually tend to produce English sentences literally transferred from their native language In this study, it is found that the students have problems in language transfer matter Most of the students are still interfered by Vietnamese grammar which is different from English in some or even many ways When producing English writing, the students tend to employ direct translation from Vietnamese into English as they have the cognitive process in mother tongue As the result, there are grammatical errors in most of their writing The second factor is overgeneralization It can be defined as expressing the target language using linguistic knowledge that has been known before The case of overgeneralization in this study is the students fail to recognize some terminologies or vocabularies related in business correspondence In other words, they often generalize the language and not concentrate on the difference between general English and business English 32 The third factor is context of learning It can happen if the students misunderstand the explanation during the process of learning When they apply the lesson improperly, the result will be incorrect It also happens when the students copy from incorrect sources Some students only copy their friend’s work without checking it or revise it As the result, they produce the same number of errors in their writing 3.2 Discussion about difficulties of the students in learning Business Correspondence After conducting the survey, collecting and analyzing data, the author find out some difficulties of the third-year students of English Faculty in learning Business Correspondence Firstly, most of students have a good attitude toward learning this compulsory subject but they not have enough time to learn after school Their time is shared for doing many other activities Besides, students usually have more subjects in a semester and dense test schedule, which makes students under pressure Having to so many things at the same time also makes them not be able to focus on finishing all assignments at home regularly and even they can not usually review and consolidate knowledge as well as prepare the new lessons completely Limitation of learning time is the reason why students not have high achievement in studying Business Correspondence Secondly, the teachers really not make the learners interested in this subject Perhaps teaching methods are not updated although they are generally methods creating practical activities and improving writing skill of students Furthermore, the context of class and society has changed, but the teaching methods have remained unchanged It is true that successful learning depends on various factors that are not on teacher-related, but teacher’s methods play an important role in students’ learning as well as in their academic achievement Consequently, ineffective teaching methods are also considered as obstacles that students encounter 33 Thirdly, it is undeniable books and documents related to the course is a major concern of students Content of most subjects conveyed to students includes theoretical foundations and practical exercises In fact, nevertheless, available documents of Business Correspondence supplying for students are quite rare so they are forced to study and get information from other sources of documents Moreover, students have to spend more time looking for books related to this theme Accordingly, limitation of documents is also realized as difficulty which students have to face with Last but not least, based on the survey we can easily recognize that writing good business letters is the biggest difficulty students need to deal with Writing good business letters means that students certainly achieve high results in learning Business Correspondence because it is the most important aim of this subject After course, students know how to write a business letter correctly and use types of business letter reasonably Nonetheless, most students’ writings have some errors, which is caused by both subjective and objective causes They not study business deeply so their business English is not good Not only that, students are more familiar with Vietnamese style of writing than English style so they cannot avoid mistakes when writing Besides, amount of time for studying theory is too much so they cannot practice writing fluently Etc In summary, the researcher has determined difficulties in learning Business Correspondence of the students by data analysis and demonstration specifically in every aspect Of course, many solutions will be mentioned to solve these problems CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 4.1 Recommendations After conducting the survey, collecting and analyzing data, the author find out some difficulties students have to deal with when they learning Business Correspondence as well as mistakes they usually make when writing a business letter Consequently, in this chapter, the solutions will be recommended so as to solve these problems effectively 34 4.1.1 To students First of all, it is necessary for students to master their time In addition to learning Business Correspondence as well as learning many other subjects, most of students often participate in some activities so they need to have a reasonable schedule in order to have enough time for finishing all assigments and reviewing knowledge well Because of being a student at university, they should give priority to learning in stead of focusing on doing part-time jobs or joining in other activities which they have to spend too much time Besides, we must all recognize that selfstudy is always an effective way to improve learning Business Correspondence, which involves studying without direct supervision or attendance in a classroom It is a valuable way to learn and also shows a good learning attitude The duration of a lesson is quite short, so self-study will help students understand and get information quickly Self-learning does take a lot of disciplines and can be difficult at first, but like any endeavor, with time it becomes easier Students can learn at home or in library with their partners as long as they themselves control their time and have self-consciousness Secondly, in order to achieve high results in learning Business Correspondence, learners must have basic business knowledge through learning other subjects well One of them is International Trade, which provides basic knowledge of trading methods in international trade, terms of trade in international trade, management of transaction processes, negotiation of international trade contracts and managing the contract implementation process, including implementation planning, implementation organization, and supervision and execution of the contract implementation process as well as risk management in international trade Besides, Business English must be mentioned This compulsory subject not only gives useful knowledge of business but also provides more vocabulary, lessons, exercises which is necessary for students to have chance to improve all skills consisting of listening, speaking, reading, especially writing Moreover, Translation and Interpreting are also subjects helping students understand the meaning of letters or emails in English most accurately as well as know how to 35 express the messages senders want to convey For students of English Faculty, learning all subjects well will be a useful tool when learning Business Correspondence Thirdly, students should access new knowledge and lessons selectively from external sources Finding and researching documents in library is extremely effective because university library contains fully books, study, documents with large amount of information and abundant knowledge Furthermore, the development of technology 4.0 and internet allow learners to easily access to find, research lectures everytime and everywhere so they ought to make us of this way to learn more Not only that, students can look for and read the writing, newspapers or magazines about economy and business as well as prestigious business correspondence books such as The Language of Business Correspondence in English by Nguyen Trong Dan (1997), A Handbook of Commercial Correspondence by A.Ashley (1986 – Oxford University Press), English and American Business Letters by Eckersley.C.E and Kaufman.W (1980 – London), The teach Yourself Letter Writer by Humphrey.G.S (1962 – London), Model Business Letters, Emails & Other Business Documents by Shirley Taylor, ect These helpful books guaranteed to give wholly what students need to understand and learn Business Correspondence well Last but not least, the author recommend that students should improve writing skill First, they need to practice to enhance writing skill because there is nothing more effective than practice as a means to improving business writing skill They always have to keep applying the correct format and grammar as well as be conscious of these details at all times so as to eventually become the best student in writing Besides, it is very important for students to proofread and edit the business letters carefully so that they can avoid making errors Simultaneously, "business writers should consider the tone of their message, whether they are writing a memo, letter, report, or any type of business document" (in Tone in Business Writing by Purdue) Then, students should supplement their business vocabulary through reading writings related to economy and business, or updating new words everyday 36 and learning Business English as mentioned Not only that, class time with the teacher is really valuable so students should take this advantage to have the teacher’s help In other words, students should not hesitate to give questions for the teacher and ask them to help to check the exercises 4.1.2 To teachers Teachers play an important role in driving students as well as improving their writing skill, so the supply of background knowledge about Business Correspondence and the reduction of errors made by students depend largely on the teacher Firstly, teacher should directly guides the effective methods to improve writing business letters skill They should help students understand the characteristic and considerable difficulties of writing each type of business letters Creating a variety of exercises, tasks and activities appropriate to different stages of writing lesson (pre-writing, while-writing and activities) can themselves be effective solutions to writing problems The teacher should strengthen the student’s hand on instructions in the classroom, so that the students can discuss and address the difficulties they face Teachers should familiarize their students with the standards of a good business in order to help them have completed writings When learners perceive the importance of learning to listen to English and the basic difficulties they often encounter, they will gradually find themselves an effective learning method Secondly, teachers are responsible for improving necessary background knowledge which related to Business Correspondence to the students before they practice writing a busniness letter For example, the third-year students of English Faculty at TMU must learn the Business Correspondence knowledge, particularly order letters Therefore, before asking students to practice to write an order letter, teachers should give them a little time to seek out information of aims, form and writing style of this type of letter When students have background of knowledge, 37 they can control the content of the text It makes them more interested in the writing topic Thirdly, teachers should focus on introducing writing methods and practices so that they can supplement in the course of self-study Taking the initiative to research and explore through the materials and practice writing will help students remember and expand knowledge easier Effective method such as referring the document before writing Lastly, teachers also need to diversity their teaching methods to inspire learners They should change bad habits of students like afraid to learn Busniness Correspondence, and translate word by word as well as tend to use Vietnamese writing style Therefore, teachers are required to motivate students to gradually abandon bad habit The teachers can give more homework and exercises Nextly, the teachers can create to teach by group or individual The teachers should use the strategic questioning strategies and analysis of student work which helps them appreciate the ability of the students 4.1.3 To the university In order to give students opportunities to chieve high academic results, university need to implement the following solutions: University should provide more courses in Business Correspondence Often these courses are part of a university's education program for students of English Faculty For some students who not want to take a semester-long course, university should offer short courses, seminars and workshops on business writing Some of these courses focus on helping with a particular aspect of business writing, while others offer learners help with basics such as grammar and punctuation Simultaneously, these seminars or workshops are also place where teachers and seniors share learning experience as well as create excitement for students in learning Business Correspondence 38 In addition, the university ought to ensure that they fully meet the students' required to find and research knowledge about Business Correspondence through the provision large amount of sources of documents and books It is really an effective solution when students are encouraged to use documents and books provided by the university, which not only makes them have better learning attidude in Business Correspondence but also in other subjects 4.2 The limitations of the study Because of the limitation of time and place, the study was limited with researching time In addition, the ability of the researcher was also limited The data was only collected through a questionnaire, supported by data from accumulating the business letters written by students Thus, the results of this study may only mirror a part of situation of the reality of difficulties faced by third-year students of English Faculty at TMU when they learning Business Correspondence as a compulsory subject There are many things that need considering and investigating thoroughly Mistakes and shortcomings are unavoidable, so any comments or extra contributions from readers are welcome 4.3 Suggestions for further studies It is very important to consider the following suggestions for further research that is related to the thesis With the above limitations, there is one important suggestion that the future research should enlarge the amount of research participants It is so necessary to spend more time designing questionnaires The author would suggest that the future studies should spend longer time and use interviewing method to collect more useful data The further studies should be investigated in many aspects which makes us have general overview of writing each sort of business letter skill, helps us find out the best method and strategy 39 CONCLUSION In short, this graduated paper has been conducted with the aim to seek difficulties faced by third-year students in English Faculty at TMU when they learn Business Correspondence as a compulsory subject In the first chapter of this study, the rationale, the aim of the research, the scope of the study and the design of the paper were presented The author mentioned some related background such as definitions of Business Correspondence, points to remember when writing a bussiness letter and essential qualities of business letters in the next chapter Not only that, the author attempted to find out the reasons of those problems and factors affecting learning Business Correspondence in chapter according to results of analysis data collected by the questionnaire and students’ business letters Finally, in chapter 4, basing on the results of the study, some recommendations and suggestions are made for both the students, the teachers and the university at TMU Neverthless, due to limitations of time, space, experience and knowledge, the study could not cover all problems Thus, the reseacher was glad to be received comments from readers Ultimately, the author hopes that this study will help students have some possible solutions to improve their learning Business Correspondence and get high academic results 40 REFERENCES Nguyen Trong Dan (1997) The Language of Business Correspondence in English Translation and Interpreting Department of English Faculty, Thuongmai University (2019) Business Correspondence Ashley, A (1986) A Handbook of Commercial Correspondence Oxford University Press Eckersley, C E and Kaufman, W (1980 – London) English and American Business Letters Humphrey.G.S (1962 – London) The teach Yourself Letter Writer Shirley Taylor Model Business Letters, Emails & Other Business Documents Wang Zhaohui, Jia Liping (2016) A Case Study of Business Correspondence English Curriculum Standard Development under the Guidance of ESP Theories Chengdu Textile College, China Yulia Sviatiuk (2015) Business Correspondence Style and Format National Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv Gartside, I (1992) Model Business Letters Longman: Pitman Publishing 10 Lougheed, L (2003) Business Correspondence: A Guide to Everyday Writing (2nd ed) Pearson Education, Inc 11 Talbot, F (2009) How to Write Effective English Business Kogan Page Limited 12 Maskari, K M A (2013) A Practical Guide to Business Writing Writing in English for non-native speakers Wiley Website https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/ https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_correspondence https://www.thebalancecareers.com/business-letter-examples-samples-andwriting-tips-2059673 https://tailieu.vn/doc/business-correspondence-1358654.html 41 https://www.toppr.com/guides/business-communication-and-ethics/businesscorrespondence/ 42 APPENDIX Survey questionnaire My name is Le Thi Dieu Linh I'm the last-year student of English Faculty at Thuongmai University I am conducting a study to finish my graduation paper, with the title “A study on difficulties in learning Business Correspondence of third-year students at English Faculty, Thuongmai University” This questionnaire is created in order to collect information and data for the research The data collected is used in the research paper only, not for any purposes I would really appreciate if you spare valuable time to fill this questionnaire Do you think Business Correspondence is useful for your future jobs?  Yes  No Have you written Business letters or Business emails before learning Business Correspondence as a compulsory subject at university?  Yes  No How many Business Correspondence lessons you have a week?     4 Which activities you in your free time?  Part-time jobs  Volunteer activities  Entertainmain  Sport activities  Learning How much time you spend doing your Business Correspondence homework?  Less 30 minutes  30 - 45 minutes  45 minutes - hour  More hour How often you finish homework and preparing new lessons?  Always  Usually  Sometimes  Seldom  Never Which writing activities you according to your teacher’s control?  Imitative or writing down  Controlled and guided writing  Free-writing or self-writing  Others (Please justify specify) How you evaluate about completeness of content in curriculum and documents compiled by English Faculty?  Partially  Barely  Fully (*) If you choose “Partially”, answer following questions: 8.1 What is missing in Business Correspondence curriculum and documents compiled by English Faculty?  Theory  Illustrative examples  Practical exercises 8.2 How often you research and get information and knowledge from other sources of Business Correspondence documents?  Hardly  Sometimes  Often In your opinion, how many percentages Business Correspondence curriculum and documents affect to your result in learning Business Correspondence?  0% - 25%  25% - 50%  50% - 75%  75% - 100% 10 Evaluate the difficulties in writing several types of business letter Tick () in the best answer for you in the following table: Less Easy difficult Normal Business enquiry letter Very Difficult difficult Quotation letter Order letter Complaint letter Recovery letter Thanks for your kindly support! ... of transaction processes, negotiation of international trade contracts and managing the contract implementation process, including implementation planning, implementation organization, and supervision... through learning other subjects well One of them is International Trade, which provides basic knowledge of trading methods in international trade, terms of trade in international trade, management of. .. affect learning Business Correspondence After collecting and analyzing the data presented in the above charts and tables, the author find out some factors that affect learning Business Correspondence