A study of e-mail writing ability of Chiangrai Rajabhat University 4th year tourism industry students

This study aims to achieve three objectives including: 1) to examine the e-mail writing ability needed among personnel in Thai travel agencies; 2) to assess e-mail writing ability of Chiangrai Rajabhat University 4th year tourism industry students; and 3) to investigate the students’ e-mail writing strategies. The research instruments included a needs analysis questionnaire, three e-mail writing ability test tasks and rubrics, and an e-mail controlled retrospective interview. There were two groups of the population involved in this study. Firstly, ten travel agencies in Bangkok were recruited for the needs assessment. Secondly, twenty-nine 4th year tourism industry students at Chiangrai Rajabhat University involved in the test administration to assess their e-mail writing abilities and strategies. Questionnaire results from ten travel agencies revealed three most common e-mail tasks, and the tasks samples were analyzed using two-layer genre analysis, at the macro level, the results showed the 4-move structure, and, at the micro structure distinct linguistic features were found such as business greetings and endings, declaratives and imperatives patterns which determine the core functions and define the nature of business correspondence. The results from the needs and genre analysis were used to formulate the construct definition of the three e-mail test tasks and the rubrics to assess and evaluate the students’ e-mail writing abilities. The findings showed effective integration of Genre Analysis and Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) served its intended purpose in assessing the students’ e-mail writing ability with emphasis to the diagnostic purpose. However, the test score results were inconsistent with strategies investigation results with possible explanation that the inefficient use of strategies somewhat affected by factors involving the students’ lacks in linguistic and background knowledge. The findings showed that the e-mail writing ability constructs, tasks, and the scoring rubrics could be used as resources for e-mail writing training workshops or courses for tourism industry students and other areas of Language for Specific Purposes.