The weekly column
Article 51, March 2001
An English Letter-Writing Secretary
By Guo Shesen
Office of English Department
Luoyang University
Henan 471000
P.R China
We have a course called English Letter-Writing for the students
of both the English Department and non-English departments at Luoyang University
as more and more Western business enters China, and the English language
plays a unique role in international society. Publishers of textbooks have
to add more and more different kinds of sample letters and instructions
to writing them to meet the increasing need. But students do not feel that
they have learnt a great deal about letter-writing. On the contrary, they
told me they had to remember special words or various styles for corresponding
kinds of letters which made them confused and tired. On the other hand the
English teachers have to prepare a lot before class and cannot finish the
planned content for class as sample letters are increasing and are becoming
longer. In addition, they have to repeat the rules of letter styles and
patterns.
New Idea
I thought about the problem for a long time until the word
"template" came to me when I was processing a Word file with Microsoft
Word. As we know, when we create a new file in MS Word it will automatically
show us different kinds of templates to use. I should also create a wizard
or expert-based program to write letters for teachers and students.
On the basis of a word processing program which I made before
I added in some tools. The important functions are:
- it can dynamically manage, update and store the information
of both addressee and addressor such as name; title; organization; street;
telephone number; country; Email address and so on. This key operation
is inputed once and for all. We can write as many recipients as we like
and their info is only inputed once and stored in a database. Whenever
we want to write to persons previously written to we may immediately
locate his/her info which will be automatically outputed on the screen.
Of course we can rename and delete any of the existing information of
both addressee and addressor. The use of the function saves us a lot
of time and energy and it lays the foundations for efficiency in teaching
and learning the course of letter-writing.
- Letter-Templates
- Layout of letters
Generally we divide English letters into family letters, social letters and business letters. Each kind can be subdivided. While making templates I did not consider it necessary and realistic to include all these hundreds of letters in the same version. I thought hard and asked myself what kind of letters should be made into templates or what are the most important letters to students. All letters are equally important when they are used on different occasions. However, to students I feel the most needed and urgent shall be letters of applications - such as those in jobhunting and follow-up letters. They are the first letters in communicating with society and employers and have great influence on their career. Even only making this kind of templates, the number of letters is great. I arranged the templates in the order of letter of application, letter of inquiry, thanks for the interview, thanks for the job offer, letter of acceptance… as commonly accepted by most people so that they can be easily located by users.
When dealing with English letters we are sure to discuss the letter layout such as punctuation patterns or letter styles (full block, modified block or semi-block) or line-spacing etc. To make the letter styles easy-to-remember and flexible to modify, the templates are all outputed automatically in full block form and properly spaced between relevant parts (inside address, salutation…). With the help of editing, we can directly make the modifications or revisions on the basis of the template letters with the info of addressee and addresser.
Srceen-shots of the secretary
About the author
Guo Shesen (guoshesen@21cn.com ) is an English teacher in the English Department, Luoyang University, Henan Province, P.R China. For more information about Guo and his works, please visit his websites:
Homepage: http://guoshesen.533.net
Guestbook: http://guoshesen.abc.yesite.com
Also: http://enlforum.51.net
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