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 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching for English for Specific Purposes (ESP). This research is aimed to study whether moves and steps in making complaints improve students’ business correspondence writing skills. 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 findings revealed that the students acquire more competency and accuracy in writing process, grammar and language structures, writing complaint email, and recognizing the language formality through the implementation of moves and steps teaching. Thus, understanding moves and steps is highly served as crucial pedagogical instruments helping students to perceive and acquire proper writing styles.