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Hi everybody, welcome to our course, Write Professional Emails in English. Since this is our first lesson, we’ll take the basic parts of a professional email and focus on some thing you should do and somethings you should avoid. By the end of this lesson, you’ll have a good understanding of how a basic English email is organized. The first thing I want you to think about is your current email, what does it look like? Is it business appropriate? In other words, is this an email you can use when applying for a new job, or making an important business contact? So, here’s your first do. Make sure you have an email address that is professional looking. My personal one looks something like this, but I know it’s not suitable for business communication. So I use my work email. You’ll notice my first and last name in the email. I recommend that you have one similar to this. You don’t have to include your full name but something that readers can easily verify as you should be fine. Now, let’s look a little bit at the four basic of an email and how to write them. These four are subject line, the greeting, the email text and the closing. This may seem overly simple but looking at each part and examining it closely is well worth the effort. We always write a subject line our heading, this is the first we always do when writing an email. It should introduce the topic of the email and get readers mind’s focus. Let’s look at a couple of examples. In our first example the topic is unclear. These show the reader exactly why you’re emailing them. The subject line should be as clear and as specific as possible. Try to imagine that you are receiving an email, which subject line has the clearest message? Now, here’s something I don’t want you to do. Don’t forget about the basics of writing in English, like spelling things correctly, and getting your grammar, punctuation, and capitalization right. Paying attention to this starts even at the subject line. We will go over this in more detail later in the module. Next comes the greeting. Greeting should be formal and not too familiar. If you are certain about at a few details of your reader, this makes things easier. For instance, if the reader is a man, then call him as Ms. Alvarez in the greeting seem strange. You laugh. But I’ve had students addressed emails to me after meeting me in class, mind you, and still call me Mrs. Landers. Mrs. Landers was my mother’s name and it certainly can’t be used to refer to me. If you are not absolutely certain, use titles that are gender nonspecific. This means greeting them without referring to their gender. Look for a person’s position at the company, university or office, if possible, and mention that in the greeting. For instance, dear Professor Lee, or dear Director Smith. If gender is the only information you have about the reader, then dear sir or dear madam will work. Some people use to whom it may concern. I’ve used this on letters of recommendation for students. You can also use it if you are addressing a company, like FedEx, a bank or an airline. If you’re addressing a group, you could use greetings like these. Now let’s turn to the email text, which is the third but largest part of your email, because it includes the main message and all necessary details. Here’s another don’t. You aren’t writing a book here avoid long emails all together. You want the reader to read all of your texts so you should only include important information, essential details but remain brief and to the point. If possible, keep the email texts to one or two paragraphs and no paragraph should be more than three for four sentences long. If you’re asking your reader to do something for you, keep that to one or two requests. I tell my students this all the time. Another thing I want you to avoid Is sounding like you are complaining or blaming your reader. This puts the reader on the defensive, it makes them less likely to do what you’re asking of them. If you ask about something that is incomplete, a trick I use is what I call, self blaming. For instance, if your email is an order or an application that has not gotten a response your email should say something like perhaps my order was incomplete or perhaps I left something out of my package rather than complain about the situation. And here’s something I always want you to do, always add a word to thanks, if you make a request for information or action your asking somebody to do something for you. Even if it’s their job to do it, no busy person likes to feel like you don’t appreciate their effort. The final part of an email is your closing. This is very short and simple. Just add regards or best regards and leave it at that. This is a professional email so no more than that is needed. This is followed by the signature, your first and last name only, no title, just your name. Add any contact information your reader will need to communicate with you. They already have your email address, but if they need anything else To easily contact you, put in here. Finally, I would like to add a word of caution here. This is our last don’t. Never address your email to your reader until you have written it and checked it over, considering all that we’ve been over in this lesson. It’s too easy to hit send by accident before you’ve carefully considered how it will sound and read at the other end. Wait until the very last to add the email address. And now for our final do. Take culture into consideration. A lot of the information you’ll get through this course is based on North American standards. However, not all cultures communicate in the same way. Would people in Japan have same style of writing as people in France? So the last check you must do before sending an email is to consider how your reader might understand what you’ve written. We will look closer at this in our final module. So, let’s review what we’ve learned in this lesson. First, there are four parts to a professionally written email, the subject line, the greeting, the email text, and the closing. And here are our do’s and dont’s. Do have a professional email. Do make your subject line very clear and brief. Do add words of appreciation and do consider cultural differences between you and your reader. Now don’t forget about spelling, grammar, punctuation and capitalization. Don’t write a book. Email texts should be limited to one to two paragraphs and two requests. Don’t complain or blame. Don’t address the email until it is written and checked carefully for all the things we’ve learned in this lesson. I hope you enjoyed this first lesson and feel confident to write your first email in this course. Try and apply as many of the dos and don’ts as we’ve covered here. I’ll see you in our next lesson.