Using Genre Awareness to Enhance Business Email Correspondence among EFL Students:

Making Complaints

Abstract

Global business communication relays on correspondence with English and other major languages through electronic means leading blooming of EFL teaching for ESP. Lertchalermtipakoon et al. (2018) applied that the use of generic teaching with moves and steps in business email writing tasks aiming to arranging meeting and replying the meeting arrangement. The study was resulted that the teaching method was positively effective, nevertheless more studies with various tasks and more samples would be solidified the outcome. In this study, the data was gathered from a class of business writing students by assigning three complaint email writing tasks that the students wrote independently: (1) a task assigning before a session of teaching, (2) a task assigning after intervening genre-based approach with examples of moves and steps, and (3) a task assigning one week after teaching to examine knowledge they acquired. The first task was to stimulate students to initially fulfill the task with their L1 and L2 knowledge. The second task was to investigate that an explicit teaching and supplying them with generic structure (moves and steps) would effectively enhance their understanding. The final task was to assert the students’ knowledge acquisition, to review their lesson, and to explore more examples. Based on the data collected from students’ post-test A after the class and post-test B in a week after, the findings revealed that the distinct pedagogy of moves and steps dramatically and continuously enhanced students’ ability to fulfill the tasks. The study discussed that the outcomes of students were the significant result of a unification of genre recognition, moves and steps, and practicing familiar tasks. These factors highly served as crucial pedagogical instruments helping students to perceive and acquire proper writing styles.