Communicating Through Email (Page 5 of 7) in pdf

10.2.2 Be considerate of your reader

The student in the second case study needed to write to request a letter of

recommendation. She sent the email on the Monday before the Tuesday in question.

See Figure 3.

Letter, please? - Message (Rich Text)

elcchanvtt

nus.edu.sg

Letter, please?

Hi Miss Chan

I am going for a Work & Travel Programme on the April holiday. I was

required to submit a letter to prove that i am proﬁ cient in English.

The letter should be ofﬁ cial (with school letterhead) and duly sealed with

the school stamp.

Can you help me to write this letter, and can i collect it on Tuesday?

It is quite urgent.

Mei

Figure 3: Unsuccessful email requesting a reference letter

This email creates a negative impression due to the following:

This is an inconsiderate request as the writer is giving the tutor only a day to write

●

the letter. The tutor will need to go through records and results in order to write the

letter. Admitting the urgency of the request does nothing to make it less rude.

The writer is also inconsiderate in that she does not consider the fact that the tutor

●

may be teaching hundreds of students and may need some help to remember exactly

who the writer is. She should have included information about for which course

and in which semester she had been in the reader’s class.

The tone is also very demanding: The letter should be ofﬁ cial (with school letterhead)

●

and duly sealed with the school stamp. These might be the exact instructions given to

the writer for the submission of the letter of recommendation but they should not

be what she tells her tutor to do as the sentence sounds like an order. The writer

could have said: The letter needs to be submitted to department X and sealed with the

ofﬁ cial stamp.

There is no expression of gratitude.

●

There is no polite closing phrase.

●

The writer implies familiarity by signing off without her surname. In addition, the

●

tutor needs the surname to help her recall the student.

As an email requesting a statement attesting to the writer’s proﬁ ciency in English,

●

this email does not make a good impression because it is either poorly-written or

poorly-edited, as it contains these errors:

Preposition: on the April holiday

Tense: was required

Punctuation: i error made twice

Communicating Through Email Page 5

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