Homework4 Jessica

Homework 4 49482013黃慧嵐

Specific Purpose

1. I want to inform my boss there are outdated items in the warehouse, what should I do with them? Also, I would like to know is it normal for the store to have outdated items or is it a potential crisis for the store. What can we do to avoid this situation next time?

3. I want to inform my customer he (or she) hasn't made a payment for three months. Does he (or she) forgot to pay or does he (or she) have trouble with money? Maybe we can find out a way to solve this problem together.

5. I want to let the supplier knows that I've bought some parts from overseas, and I should have received it few days before. However, because of the overdue shipment I got nothing and it really bothered me.

Exploring the Web on Your Own

1. The first tip for "you" view is "Choose clear, familiar words." Use simple words to express your ideas. It can make your readers easy to understand your content. I think this is a main mistake which we Taiwanese students often make. We tend to think in Chinese and then translate it into English. We try to find equivalent words but we do not know that some of these words are rarely used in English. We can not assume that everyone know the word we use. So the best way to prevent this problem is to use clear and familiar words. For example we can use "make worse" rather than "exacerbate."

2. The second tip for "you" view is "Use personal pronouns." It says that we should use more personal pronouns such as "we, us, you, our, yours" in our writings. These words allow us to "speak" directly to our reader and they help us avoid abstractions. They can also shorten our sentences. Besides, using these words can make our readers think we are actually communicating with them. There are interactions between writers and readers. For example, "Our company offers every customer a 20 percent discount." sounds more friendly then "The xxx company offers every customer a 20 percent discount."

3. The third tip for "you" view is "Avoid sexist language in business writing." We tend to use "he" in our writings, but we should think about our female readers' feeling. Use words that do not have sexist meanings in it such as flight attendant rather than stewardess. It is better to write both "he and she" when you are talking about someone you don't really know his (or her) sex.