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Unit 2 Communication by Email

Unit Goals

What you should learn to do 1. Chat online

2. Use abbreviations and slangs in communicating online 3. Write an email

What you should know about 1. Surfing online for: Information Shopping

2. Good or bad of chatting online 3. Noun clauses

Section I Talking Face to Face 1. Imitating Mini-Talks 2. Acting out the Tasks

3. Studying Email Information on the Internet 4. Following Sample Dialogues 5. Putting Language to Use Section II Being All Ears

1. Learning Sentences for Workplace Communication 2. Handling a Dialogue

3. Understanding a Short Speech / Talk Section III Trying your Hand 1. Practicing Applied Writing

2. Writing Sentences and Reviewing Grammar Section IV Maintaining a Sharp Eye Passage 1 :

Information Related to the Reading Passage

It’s no understatement to say that e-mail has had a profound effect on our professional and personal lives. People thousands of miles away from each other can send and receive detailed documents within mere seconds. This allows us to take on projects that wouldn’t have been practical or possible only a few years ago. It has become routine for us to correspond and exchange files with people overseas. The only obstacle is the difference in time zones.

But on the other hand, e-mail can eat up a substantial portion of our workday. Most of the time and effort involved is going through unsolicited messages and separating the good from the bad. But not all unsolicited messages are spam. Text E-mail, a Blessing and Annoyance For the blessing:

E-mail is a conversation that does not require an immediate response (like a telephone). If someone calls you on the telephone, you pick it up (unless you have an answering machine, voice mail or you are just plain rude) and the conversation begins. This is an interactive conversation.

With e-mail, you send a message and then wait for a response. The response may come in five minutes or it may come in five days. Either way, it’s not an interactive conversation.

If a hundred people send you e-mails in one day, so what? You don’t have to talk with all one hundred. Just think of all the hellos, goodbyes and other unnecessary chit-chat you can avoid. With e-mail, you only deal with their messages (which usually omit hellos, goodbyes and such) and you deal with them on your own time. That’s the blessing.

Now for the annoyance:

Too many e-mail users assume that the minute someone receives an e-mail, the person will read it. Bad assumption.

If you schedule a meeting for an hour from now and send an e-mail to each

participant, the chance that all the participants will read that message within the hour will be pretty small. On the other hand, if you schedule the meeting for the next day, the chance that they will read the message will be pretty high. Remember, e-mail is not designed for immediate response (that’s why you have a telephone), it’s designed for convenience.

Some (not all) e-mail systems have features that try to combat this problem. These features (usually called “notification”) will notify you when a person has received your e-mail and may also tell you when the person has read it (really all it can do is assure you that the person has looked at the first screen of the message — it has no way to know if the person has read the message word for word). Referring back to the example in the previous paragraph, you could check to see who has checked their e-mail before the meeting and then telephone those who have not read it.

Attachment: Smilies

Since there are no facial and voice cues to help e-mail, users have come up with something called “smilies”. They are simple series of symbols that are pieced together in the e-mail text to help express the writer’s feelings. The most common example is :-) (a smiling face). Here are some more examples.

They are typically found at the end of sentences and will usually refer back to the previous statement. Language Points

1 Explanation of Difficult Sentences

1. (Para. 3) If a hundred people send you e-mail in one day, so what?

Analysis: so what? is an informal expression, which means “ Why should I care?” Translation: 如果在一天内有一百个人给你发邮件，那又怎么样呢？

2. (Para. 3) Just think of all the hellos, good-byes and other unnecessary chit-chat you could avoid.

Analysis: Just is used to make a statement or command stronger, meaning in Chinese