Analysis of Email Tasks in Business English: A Language Report

This report provides an in-depth analysis of the article "Designing email tasks for the business English classroom: Implications from a study of Hong Kong’s key industries" by Stephen Evans (2012). The analysis covers key aspects including needs analysis, genre analysis, interpersonal communication, intercultural communication, and assessment tasks. The report examines how the article addresses the importance of email communication in professional and academic settings, particularly within the context of business English. It explores the author's recommendations for designing email tasks, emphasizing the use of qualitative data and simulation-based methods to enhance students' understanding and application of email communication structures. The report evaluates the article's strengths and weaknesses in relation to needs analysis, genre, interpersonal, and intercultural communication, highlighting the significance of effective email structure and intercultural sensitivity in business communication. The report also discusses the authenticity of the text and its implications for business English courses.

Running head: LANGUAGE FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES
Language for Specific Purposes
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
1-Needs analysis.........................................................................................................................2
Introduction............................................................................................................................2
Analysis and evaluation of the Chapter.................................................................................3
2-Genre.......................................................................................................................................4
Introduction............................................................................................................................4
Analysis and evaluation of the Chapter.................................................................................5
3- Interpersonal communication................................................................................................6
Introduction............................................................................................................................6
Analysis and evaluation of the Chapter.................................................................................6
4- Intercultural communication..................................................................................................7
Introduction............................................................................................................................7
Analysis and evaluation of the Chapter.................................................................................8
5- Assessment tasks....................................................................................................................9
Introduction............................................................................................................................9
Analysis and evaluation of the Chapter.................................................................................9
6- The authenticity of the text (see the file under the name of Selection Material).................10
Introduction..........................................................................................................................10
Analysis and evaluation of the Chapter...............................................................................10
References:...............................................................................................................................12

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Introduction
The following study is an analysis of the article titled, “Designing email tasks for the
business English classroom: Implications from a study of Hong Kong’s key industries”, by
Stephen Evans (2012), published on Elsevier. The article discusses about the importance of
email as a mode of communication in professional and scholarly work. The author tries to
increase knowledge on the use of email within both business as well as academic context and
reduce the gap through the development of suggestions on how an email can be designed so
that it can be used for business English courses (Evans, 2012). The study is based on
qualitative data that is collected from the service sector in Hong Kong which includes 30
hours of interviews with Chinese professionals in English language service, as well as four
Case studies in the form of Week in the Life, 50 email chains that included 406 different
messages. This data helped to provide information the importance of email for internal as
well as external communication and how it can be related to spoken communication as well
as the significance of intertextuality and length of the email, its structure of language and the
message (Gollin-Kies et al., 2016). The author further recommended a simulation based
method to embed email communication structures within reading and writing activities for
students (Garzone et al., 2017; Evans, 2012).
1-Needs analysis
Introduction
Need analysis refers to the process of identifying the human needs within a program. Need
analysis therefore is an integral component of a user centric design that helps to focus on the
users and their expectations and needs from the system as well as helping to understand how
the user intends to use the system (Woodrow, 2017). Understanding the user’s needs
moreover helps in better job performance by delivering products and services that addresses

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those needs. This needs analysis helps to understand the important goals and aspirations that
influence the users or the communities and therefore informs requirement analysis processes
(Basturkmen, 2016). This can include various principles. these principles include the
complexity of user’s needs, understanding the user needs to bridge product or service deign
to business case, using the user’s needs to understand the trade-offs of the design process,
using the user needs to unify a design that is multi-disciplinary to address the business case,
supporting investigations into the business plan to understand the human aspects involved in
the system and functional merit, expressing information and results of investigations from the
user’s perspective, relating the imp actors of the process with the user requirement and
supporting the allocation of adequate time from the development process that an validate the
user requirements (Trace et al., 2015; Woodrow, 2017).
Analysis and evaluation of the Chapter
Needs analysis for lingua-franca mode of communication in which emails can be utilized by
professional and students to support the learning of their language as well as incorporate
information in a professional and understandable manner, to improve coherence of business
communication. in the article, “ Designing email tasks for the business English classroom:
Implications from a study of Hong Kong’s key industries” Evans ( 2012) discusses the needs
of the business professional as well as students to have an explanatory series of information
that can help them to understand the best approached of using mails for both business and
academic context by showing how a gap in knowledge exists in the given domain as well as
suggesting the need for further studies to be done in the matter (Conrad, 2019). The author
also suggested that professionals as well as students often have a requirement to show
effective usage of language both for business as well as academic purposes and efficient
communication can be paramount for both business as well as academic success (Otilia,
2015). Thus, the needs analysis of the article clearly helps to understand the learning needs of

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business professionals and students to improve their vocabulary and linguistic capability as
well as understanding of an effective email structure that can support better communication
as well as consolidation of knowledge. Needs of the students have also been identified as
ever increasing and dynamic based on the ELT materials that the students need to follow for
their academic as well as professional growth. However, this study does not clearly perform a
needs analysis in terms of vocabulary for creating an effective email structure that can be
used by both professionals as well as students (Starfield & Paltridge, 2016).
2-Genre.
Introduction
A genre can be understood as a goal oriented social process that involves the interaction of
the participants using a common language within a conventional structure of the stage.
Genres can therefore be a social factor in which members from cultures interact, it can be
staged in which meanings are developed in the form of steps and they can also be goal
oriented involving rhetorical structures that serves social purposes. Genres can differ based
on its texts that differentiate the social cultural purposes of the genre and how the genres are
structured. Thus text which has similarities in it structure and purpose can be classified within
a single genre. The elemental genres can be of eight types such as recount, narratives,
explanation, information report, exposition, procedure, explanation, description and
discussion. Genre moreover can be differentiated into a factual or story and factors such as
enablement explanation, documentation and persuasion can be addressed within the factual
type. Genre can have five families which include sequential explanation, causal explanation,
factual explanation, theoretical explanation and consequential explanation. These factors help
to explain the genre in terms of the phenomena that is involved how they occur along with its

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sequential factors and underlined theories as well as consequences arising from those
phenomena (Riordan, 2018; Espinoza Zúñiga et al., 2019).
Analysis and evaluation of the Chapter
The article “Designing email tasks for the business English classroom: Implications from a
study of Hong Kong’s key industries” followed the genre of an academic paper that included
a review of research articles, abstracts from conferences and knowledge from textbooks. The
article provides an academic understand on the subject of using emails for communication
purposes. The research articles that were reviewed provided an understanding on the various
aspects in the form of case studies and inter views that helped the author to develop and
understanding on both internal and external email communication approaches (Flowerdew,
2016). The article also follows elements form the professional genre by the inclusion of
reports and letters that have been discussed within the interviews thereby showing certain
aspects of the genre within the article. Therefore it can be pointed out that the article mostly
depends on the academic genre for presenting its knowledge and also uses a professional
approach to disseminate important personal insights from the profession. The focus on the
genre within the article moreover helped to consider the exercises outlined within the studies
that can improve the abilities to use emails more effectively as communication media. The
discrete nature of information that has been collected from various sources by the author
moreover serves to address the diverse requirement of the article to address the purpose of an
academic genre. The discussion made within the article furthermore focuses on maintaining
its usefulness in academic literature by identifying important factors that influences the
importance of the topic within both academic as well as professional contexts while
maintaining the academic integrity and standards of the study thereby ensuring that it can
used by students and for future academic studies (Whyte, 2019; Conrad, 2019).

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3- Interpersonal communication
Introduction
Interpersonal communication can play a significant role in the development of language for
specific purposes by influencing the types of talk, the features of relational talk, power and
social distance, face as well as politeness within intercultural communication. The different
types of talk such as Phatic exchanges, relational talk, transactional talk can be incorporated
within a communication through strong interpersonal skills that can be exhibited by various
activities such as greeting, leave-talking, small talks, anecdotes, selecting topics of mutual
interest as well as providing enquiries, instructions and requests (Garzone et al., 2017). These
actions can show attributes of interpersonal skills within communication and therefore
support its effectiveness and efficacy. It van therefore be remarked that five categories of
interpersonal language such as the use of pronouns to signal social relation, identification of
backchannels to promote listener solidarity, using vague languages to show solidarity over
knowledge, using hedges to negotiate power on knowledge and utilizing deontic modality to
negotiate power on actions can effectively show inter personal skills over a discursive
practices (Gollin-Kies et al., 2016).
Analysis and evaluation of the Chapter
The article by Evans (2012) fulfills these five factors that identify strong interpersonal
language development that has been promoted for the development of the emails for
professional and academic purposes. Evans (2012) not only supports the importance of
developing social relations and listener’s solidarity through the emails but also exhibit a
string grasp over knowledge and negotiating power over the knowledge as well as the actions
by incorporating deontic modality and hedges in the email languages. The author focuses on
relational talks within the emails to promote an inclusive feeling while addressing the needs

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for communication among the correspondents. The author utilizes the pronouns to create an
understanding of a group effort that is required to develop a god communication within a
team and therefore serve both academic as well as professional purposes. The relation
between email and spoken communication suggested by the author is moreover taken as a
cornerstone to integrate the principles of interpersonal communication which are classically
related to spoken communication to be associated with email as a form of written
communication. Thus the approach helps to imply the importance of interpersonal skills
within emails thus providing a valuable insight for both professionals and students on the best
approaches of using emails for communication purpose (Trace et al., 2015; Garzone et al.,
2017; Evans, 2012).
4- Intercultural communication
Introduction
Intercultural communication involves the focus on culture and its differences and how to
engage individuals from different cultures. Culture can be defined as a non-structured set of
beliefs, norms, attitudes, values and assumptions shared by a group of people that influences
their behaviors and actions. With the socio-cultural or a socio-constructionist point of view,
culture can be collection of repetitive and habitual disposition or systems or expectations held
by people. The predictive models of intercultural differences help in the comparison of
cultures using different parameters. Hofstede’s cultural dimensions identifies five dimensions
based on which cultures can be differentiated from each other which includes power
differences, individualism/ collectivism, masculinity/femininity, uncertainty avoidance and
long/short term orientation (Basturkmen, 2016; Gollin-Kies et al., 2016). These aspects not
only helps to understand how individual cultures can be different from each other but also
helps to understand how best to address the cultural differences within communications

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showing sensitivity towards other cultures and therefore facilitate better engagement between
individuals from multitudes of cultures. However, it has also been mentioned that the
predictive frameworks can be disadvantageous for cultural studies because the frameworks
can be static instead of being dynamic and provide an ethnocentric view of cultures based on
fixed or based assumptions. The framework can also be very simplistic and ignore the
complexity of factors that promotes individual as well group identity. The approach also
increases the focus on the differences and difficulty in communicating between multiple
cultures. This factor even though can be inherently disadvantageous for developing an
understanding of a culture, can still provide a simplistic and easy approach to develop,
maintain and support inter cultural communications without having to delve into too much
details of the factors that influence the culture (Woodrow, 2017; Trace et al., 2015).
Analysis and evaluation of the Chapter
The author, Evans (2012), focuses on the culture as an important factor while developing
business emails intended to communicate information between professionals from various
cultural backgrounds which in case of the study included the American and the Chinese
cultures. The understanding of the cultural differences between the American and Chinese
culture, formed an important indicator and metric for designing an effective email that
adapted the cultural differences and showed the ability to communicate in a culturally
sensitive and appropriate manner. The author focused on negotiations and the use of
pronouns and grammar to show cultural sensitivity in the emails (Otilia, 2015; Conrad, 2019).
The study however, did not utilize any standardized framework such as Hofstede’s
dimensions to differentiate between the American and Chinese culture before focusing on the
best approaches for mail communication to address this differences. It can therefore be
suggested that the article, “Designing email tasks for the business English classroom:
Implications from a study of Hong Kong’s key industries”, rightfully points out the

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importance of inter cultural communication skills while communicating with professionals
from various cultural backgrounds to ensure the intended message is correctly understood and
interpreted thus ensuring that the purpose of the communication is being served (Trace et al.,
2015; Evans, 2012).
5- Assessment tasks
Introduction
Assessment tasks are important factors that can improve competency and skills through
application of theoretical knowledge on a practical purpose. The tasks outlined within
assessment structures of language for specific purpose development based on reflection on
the specific areas of need n LSP and how to address or achieve those areas. The assessment
tasks further helps to understand the big question of how development for language for
specific purposes can be related to the general design of the syllabus and curriculum as well
as how development of the core competency can promote better communication as well as
professional development. The assessment tasks of organizing the syllabus based on the
structure, function, notion, topic, situation, skills and the involved tasks or activities can help
in the development of a discourse based and genre based LSP which makes an important
factor for communication skills development (Woodrow, 2017; Garzone et al., 2017; Evans,
2012).
Analysis and evaluation of the Chapter
The article “Designing email tasks for the business English classroom: Implications from a
study of Hong Kong’s key industries”, develops the email model on which emails can be
created for business and academic communication based on the tasks outlined in the Bachelor
of Communications and Bachelor n Education textbooks, in which a set of writing practices

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are used to link to a chain of message that the reader can go through to understand the context
of the communication. This approach is defined by the author as setting the scene which not
only promotes authenticity of the email but also ensures that the recipient understands the
importance as well as the context of the email through the chain of information associated
with the single email. Ensuring that the email chain only contains relevant information to the
communication furthermore ensures that the communication is effective and addresses the
assessment tasks outlined by the studies (Garzone et al., 2017).
6- The authenticity of the text (see the file under the name of Selection Material).
Introduction
The authenticity of text outlined in the article. “Designing email tasks for the business
English classroom: Implications from a study of Hong Kong’s key industries” by Evans
(2012) can be attributed by academic citations as well as the academic journals evaluated by
the author to support and justify the key argument and recommendation made in the paper.
The relevance of the studies in the field of communication especially for inter cultural
communication further adds to its authenticity making the article an important source of
knowledge for academic and business communication development purposes. This article
can be referred to scholars as well as business professionals that help in the development of
better communications systems (Otilia, 2015).
Analysis and evaluation of the Chapter
From the evaluation of the chapter titled, “Designing email tasks for the business English
classroom: Implications from a study of Hong Kong’s key industries”, it can be understood
that the author performed a holistic need analysis on which he developed and understanding
of the communication needs in both business and academic context. This allowed the

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development of an appropriate approach in communication using email. The author also
focused on setting a identifying the genre of the email so as to ensure that the context of the
email and its intended purpose are clarified and clearly understood by the participants
including the recipients and the senders. The importance of interpersonal communication
skills within effective communication systems has been studied by the author to explain why
inclusion of such aspect is necessary in emails. The important intercultural communication
was focus on considering the nature of the business that includes communication between
professionals from various cultural backgrounds. Furthermore the assessment tasks helped to
understand the approaches that have been adopted in the assessment to promote better skills
and competency development and thereby ensure better ability to perform its activities
(Woodrow, 2017).
From the above study it can be understood that the article “ Designing email tasks for the
business English classroom: Implications from a study of Hong Kong’s key industries”
provides valuable insights on the importance of using emails for professional and academic
communications that covers all the five issues such as the needs analysis, genre analysis,
interpersonal communication, intercultural communications and assessment tasks as an
approach towards supporting better communication standards in the emails. Thus this article
can be very useful for both business professionals as well as academic scholars and thus can
be recommended considering the content and authenticity of the text and can provide benefit
to both students as well as workplace (Basturkmen, 2016).