东北石油大学经济管理学院市场营销学课件Chapter 8 Written Communication Patterns.ppt

Chapter 8: Written Communication Patterns Written Communication Patterns International English Writing Tone and Style Letter Formats Facsimiles (Fax) Electronic Mail (E-mail) Résumé and Job Search Information What percent of outgoing international correspondence is sent in English? 97% 1% in French, German, and Spanish (Percentages for incoming correspondence are similar.) What are lexical errors? Content errors; errors in meaning Examples of lexical errors: We baste (based) this conclusion on our research. Thank you for your patients (patience). Our office will be closed on this wholey (holy) day. With your aide (aid), we will soon have our office fully staffed. The results will be worth the weight (wait). Since you plan to visit an ant (aunt) in New York, perhaps we could meet at your convenience. According to the senses (census), the number of exported trucks has declined in the last decade. What are syntactic errors? Errors in the order of the words in a sentence. Native speakers of a language will discover syntactic errors in a sentence more readily than lexical errors. In Spanish, the noun is given first, then adjectives follow. Example: Paseo del Rio (River Walk) Know Your Reader International English Use the 3,000 to 4,000 most common English words. Uncommon words, such as onus for burden and flux for continual change, should be avoided. Use only the most common meaning of words. The word high has 20 meanings; the word expensive has one. Choose words with singular rather than multiple meanings. Select action-specific verbs and words with few or similar alternate meanings. Use cook breakfast rather than make breakfast; use take a taxi rather than get a taxi. Avoid redundancies (interoffice memorandum), sports terms (ballpark figure), and words that draw mental pictures (red tape). Avoid using words in other than their most common way, such as making verbs out of nouns (impacting the economy and faxing a message). Be aware of word