Short Presentation From emails to business letters: Teacher explorations in learner autonomy and pragmatics more

Sat, Dec 18, 09:15-09:40 Asia/Tokyo

Japanese university students typically have little knowledge or experience of writing emails or letters in English. Even short emails to teachers to apologize for an absence or to submit an assignment tend to be inadequate. Students in their final two years may need to be writing business letters as they approach the world of work, but this, too, they typically have not learned to do. This presentation will report on two explorations into student writing of emails and business letters in which the resources needed for writing were sourced and shared by the students on Google docs. Both explorations also addressed issues in pragmatics: choices regarding register, and expression in written communications of the speech acts of request, acceptance, and refusal.