Paper short abstract:

This paper reports on a method for teaching students how to write request emails to a senior or higher social status person in Japanese. A series of lessons was designed by the authors to improve the writing skills of students on the intermediate Japanese language course at the University of Leeds.

Paper long abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to report on the teaching of writing request emails in Japanese to a senior or a person of higher social status. A series of lessons was designed to improve students' writing skills in an intermediate Japanese language course at the university where the authors work in the autumn semester of 2022/23.

Previously, the language curriculum at the authors' university had focused primarily on the correct use of keigo, or honorifics, and had not provided enough opportunities for students to notice and understand for themselves the appropriate politeness for request emails depending on the purpose and relationship with the person they were writing to.

Based on Brown and Levinson's (1987) Politeness Strategies (PS), a series of lessons were provided to enable students to reflect on how to write effective request emails, both individually and with peers in small groups. First, after a brief explanation of the concept of PS by one of the authors, students discussed the positive and negative points of a sample email written by a former student and posted it on Padlet to share with other groups. Students then corrected the sample email individually and added comments in English to explain the aspects they focused on for their correction. Finally, they wrote a request email for a similar task in class to consolidate their email writing skills. Immediately after the final task, an anonymous online survey was conducted to collect students' feedback.

The group discussions showed how the students critically examined the sample request email from various aspects such as organisation, content and conventions, and the emails they revised from the sample email showed their awareness and consideration of the use of negative politeness strategies. Furthermore, the results of the online survey revealed the students' positive responses to the new curriculum and their sense of improved understanding of Japanese politeness.

Reference

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.