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During my work experiences in foreign companies for in past years, I have seen many cases that my colleagues those who can speak Japanese very well in business conversations but was not fluent while use Japanse in business written e-mail. Why there’s such gap happen in Japanese language? Many Taiwanese colleagues and students were asking me to make a research on this tipic, and to analyze the mis-use tendency of written business e-mail without actual working experiences. On this research, I will focus on the questionnaires include 4 different scenarios of written business e-mail. First is send to elders (in same company), second is to younger people (out of company), third is to younger people (in same company), and last is to customer (out of company). Each part of questions will leave blanks for the research subject to answer regarding to request expression. They will have to write the e-mail in business format based on four different types of scenarios as decriped in above. The object of questionnaires are Japanese department students of Taiwan Kaohsiung 2 Universities who acquired N1 of Japanese-Language Proficiency Test. As results, we have found that using request expression of business e-mail, ‘Could you do’ and ‘Cushion word’ that put on request expression are high correct answers, however ‘intention’ and ‘directions’ of request expression are quite low correct answers. Overall, there are many wrong expression in use of honorific which is either insufficient or too excess.
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