About This Lesson
Whether you're teaching a class in business writing at the college level or seeking to start instructing your middle-school students in how to craft proper business emails, these skills are important. Teaching emails might not prove as easy as the endeavor initially sounds. Keep in mind that emails are a form of communication that have changed through the years. For example, before the prevalence of texting, emails were often more casual; now, however, they are typically used for formal purposes, such as the procurement of a job and the communication between colleagues.
Assess Your Own Perceptions
Prior to teaching your students how to create stylish and appropriate emails, assess your own understanding of emails, especially formal ones in a business setting. Acquiring a textbook specific to business writing can offer you some samples. Another useful approach is to review your recent emails sent in a business setting and to see where and how you yourself could improve. Then, you can take these skills and apply them to the lessons in the classroom.
Require Students to Write
Your students might never have written a professional email before. Even college students do not necessarily know the correct way to address professors and construct emails. A smart place to start is by instructing your students to write an email for a specific purpose. For example, you might ask them to write what they would include in a thank-you email for a job interview or how they might craft an inquiry email for a desired position. Have students perform this task in class so that they aren't looking up how to create the emails. While offering samples is certainly an important part of the process, you want to first see what students authentically create.
Offer Samples
Once your students have written emails that they think are appropriate for the task, you can sample up on the board. Reviewing the samples in class is smart so that students have the time to immediately compare what they have written to what you have brought up on the board. Go through the sample emails with the students to point out to them what is positive. You should also review some samples that have common flaws in them. One possibility is to provide students with a sheet of flawed emails so that they can work in groups to identify the issues with the communications. Once students have seen the samples and you have discussed the samples as a group, ask your learners to revise their emails.
Review the Details
Writing a proficient professional email is about more than having simply the overall right tone. The small details of the email matter. For example, you can integrate email subject line testing to teach students how to craft subject lines that actually appeal to the audience members and speak to the content of the email. You should also discuss features such as how writers address the recipient of the email, the length of the sentences and how much gratitude is expressed in the email. Some students think that they have to express immense amounts of gratitude in emails thanking a potential employee for an interview. However, writing phrases of gratitude too much could come across as naive.
Teaching students how to craft business emails is an important part of instructing youngsters. These skills are quite clearly applicable to their professional lives. Eventually, your students will need to send out inquiry emails to possible internships and jobs. They will have to write thank-you emails and follow-up emails, and they will need to communicate with colleagues in professional settings. Now is the time to start teaching these young learners how to write these emails in the proper way.
