College students can't even write e-mail? ! --Five steps to teach students to write concise and eye-catching letters

Since I took part-time classes at the university, I often needed to communicate with students by e-mail. Only then did I realize that nowadays college students generally do not know the basic etiquette of writing letters. The content is either vague or long, but they do not know where the key points are. To this end, I wrote an article to reflect this phenomenon (see: "I feel after receiving several unsigned letters "). Later, I saw several teachers who teach in universities have similar complaints.

However, although the root of the problem lies in the fact that children born after the millennium are kidnapped by mobile phones when they are growing up, and lack the tempering of reading and writing. However, it has to be said that in school education, they do not pay much attention to practical expression exercises, and they have not been seriously taught how to write a letter that takes into account the formal etiquette and the mastery of words. So, we ourselves need to be partly responsible.

Since realizing this problem, I've been wanting to design a class to teach students the skills of letter writing. Coincidentally, I recently read the book " Reading and Writing Open Class - University Teacher God's Rescue" written by Wang Wenren, a professor at the General Studies Center of Huwei University of Science and Technology. Chinese class is not boring! " , the first lesson in the book "Writing a Pleading Letter to the Teacher", Mr. Wang is sharing the method of instructing students to write e-mail.

So, I added some personal designs on top of the teaching method taught by Mr. Wang, and took the students to practice in the second class of this semester. Because this method is concise and to the point, students can absorb and apply it in a short period of time, with remarkable results. Last week, I took the same course to my middle school composition class and tried it out, and it worked just as well.

Since both big and small children can quickly grasp the key points of letter writing, it can be seen that they really lacked professional training in the past, so they could not write letters. Instead of complaining, why not take a moment to teach them?

The part of the letter format is very easy to get started. I won't go into details in this article. You can refer to the " Email Letter Format Etiquette Etiquette that Schools Don't Teach, But You Must Know!" published in "Wind Media"! Super basic, if you can make a good impression, it will be a big plus > article. Below, I mainly share the teaching steps for teaching students to write concise and coherent letter content :

1. According to the situation (1), write e-mail according to your own way

Before formally teaching students how to write letters, I designed a situation based on a real case I had dealt with in the past (" after becoming a sixth-year student... "), and asked students to work as a group to discuss and see: if you It is the party concerned, how to write a letter to ask the teacher for mercy, so that the teacher will soften? Then write it on the study sheet. The situation is as follows:

• You are a senior, and if you don't graduate this semester , you will be expelled...
• But you are still very confused. In Mr. Hong's class, you often miss class , and you didn't even take the mid-term exam ...
• It's almost the end of the term, and you're starting to get scared. In the last five classes, you came to each class, handed in the homework, and also came to the final exam ...
• However, when you received the result, it was only 49 points , you were shocked, because this is the only subject you failed , and you don't know how to explain to your parents...
• Finally, you decide to write a letter to plead with the teacher ...

The reason why they are asked to write letters based on their own understanding before explaining the method is to collect negative teaching materials on the spot, so that they can clearly see their blind spots.

2. Read the letter aloud on the stage, and the teacher will explain on the spot

I gave the students twenty minutes to write the letter, read it aloud on the stage after completion, and then handed it over to the students in the audience to give feedback and suggestions, and then I would make a comment.

On the whole, although they have various reasons for missing classes, some of them are quite ingenious - only half a year of life left, finishing school is the only wish before death, or parents are locked up for drug addiction, he has to take care of his younger brothers and sisters. --- But when narrating, they usually can't grasp the point of expression. I often listen to it for a long time, and I still don't know how they want the teacher to help him. like:

I will not mention the format errors and typos. The biggest problem with this letter is that he did not explain that he was my student! I have so many students, where do I remember who I was? If I had to read dozens of letters at the same time, I might not even bother to read them, so I deleted them.

There are quite a few letters of this kind that are not clear on the subject. It can be seen that students who have not received writing training write whatever comes to their mind with the stroke of a pen, without taking into account the reactions of readers when they read.

Through my explanation and asking them to put themselves in their shoes and think about how they feel when they receive such a letter, they can roughly understand that a letter that misses the point, not only doesn't solve the problem, but may annoy the recipient.

But how to write it? In fact, the structure of the letter is very simple, with only three parts, which is more useful than the traditional start-up and turn-up…

3. Use the "inverted pyramid structure" to write e-mails

Teacher Wang Wenren suggested to use the " inverted pyramid structure " to write letters, and I will give you a clear answer now in ""No penalty for writing, then how to teach it?" 〉 This method is also used in the teaching of confession writing. As shown in the figure:

The inverted pyramid structure is written in order from top to bottom according to the importance of things.

First of all, use the six methods to briefly explain " what happened " in the first paragraph, so that the recipient can quickly understand the purpose of your letter. Even if the recipient is busy, after reading the first paragraph, you can clearly grasp the main idea of the letter without delaying too much time. Taking situation (1) as an example, it can be written as:

Teacher: Hello, I'm Wu Xiang , your student in the class "Reading and Creative Ideas" this semester . I received my grades today and found out that I had been duped , probably because of my poor attendance before midterm . But I have all the homework to be handed in after mid-term, and I want to ask the teacher to help me confirm my grades, or see if there is any chance to make amends .

In this paragraph, there is no need to mention "place", other people, times, events, whys, hows, etc. are all put into the paragraph, so that the teacher can understand your situation and purpose.

Next, if the teacher has time to read the letter, he will want to know the reason why you missed too many classes. You can explain it in the " Explanation " in the second paragraph. like:

Because I am the breadwinner of the family, and I come from a single-parent family, I need to take care of the family, so I have to work six days a week. And your class happens to conflict with my working hours. If the class can be adjusted, I will try my best to coordinate with my colleagues; but if there is really no way to adjust the class, I have to skip the class. I really didn't mean to skip class, I just had a last resort. Please forgive me!

In the final " conclusion ", use one sentence to point out the key points of the letter and remind the recipient. like:

In short, I will be expelled from school if I don't graduate. I hope the teacher can help me reconfirm my grades, or if there is any remedy, I will try my best to cooperate and not let the teacher down.

After writing three paragraphs, adding blessings and signatures, a letter with a clear purpose and clear words can be easily completed?

4. Design a clear and eye-catching theme

Not just college students, many people easily overlook the importance of the subject (headline) when writing a letter. A letter with a good subject will make the recipient see the existence of the letter first in the vast sea of letters; on the contrary, a letter with a vague subject, no matter how moving the content of the letter is, the recipient may press it to the end before opening it Come and see.

How to design a good theme? The point is: the subject line must immediately let the recipient know your purpose, and give a little urgency to it. The following failed themes are frequently used titles when students write to me:

• " Letter of Apology ": When I saw this theme, I thought to myself, "What is the apology? No one has offended me recently, I'll take a look at it later."
• " Teacher, please ask ": When I saw this theme, I thought to myself: "It doesn't seem like I'm in a hurry, I'll look at it when I have time."
• " Please explain my grades ": Seeing this subject, I will... just delete the letter!

An ideal letter title would be:

Teacher, please help me confirm my grades, I can't be taken as...

Just looking at the title, I immediately knew that this matter is urgent, and there may be room for recovery if it is dealt with early. Of course, I will read it immediately.

Five, according to the situation (2), write e-mail according to the new way

After the lecture, I can't just talk without practice. I designed a situation (2) to ask them to write e-mails with the method they just learned. The situation is as follows.

• There is a very confused senior in your group, who often skips class, and even when he comes to class, he is still swiping his phone...
• The final report accounts for 40%, everyone has to be assigned work, and the seniors are assigned to check the data...
• In the last discussion before the report, you found that the senior was empty-handed and had nothing to prepare...
• You express dissatisfaction with the senior, and the senior chokes you: "Sister, help me and you will die!"...
• So, you have to assign the work of the senior to everyone...
• As the team leader, you know that the team members are dissatisfied and do not want him to get grades for no reason, so you wrote a letter to explain to the teacher and asked the teacher to deal with it...

I also write to them for twenty minutes, and then take the study sheet back for correction. When I read the letters they wrote, there was still room for improvement, but their growth within two classes was really noticeable. I think from the bottom of my heart:

 Students are really not stupid or reluctant to learn, but why in Taiwan's compulsory education, a professional writing class is not well planned so that students can practice these important and indispensable skills?