Even Japanese people who have learned English very well in school often have difficulty expressing themselves clearly in business writing when communicating with overseas colleagues, customers, vendors, and stakeholders. This happens sometimes because people are not familiar with the idioms, jargon, and specialist terminology of business English e-mails and reports. But more often Japanese can confuse formal and casual English phrases and will, as a result, communicate with an unintended and unfortunate nuance to their message. And frequently, because the structures of business English writing differ significantly from those used in Japanese business, English native readers find Japanese-written English e-mails and reports confusing with the purpose and objective not clear enough. Proficiency in English learned in school does not necessarily mean that one can write in English for business in a way that one might intend and would be appreciated by overseas business partners. There are even cultural issues that often need addressing. For example, when writing a polite letter or e-mail in Japanese there are certain formal greetings that must be included at the beginning and end. This kind of business writing etiquette is very important in Japanese industry. Business writing in English is no different. There are just as many opening and closing greetings in English that are more or less appropriate based on the relationship with the reader. and learning how to use them correctly without being taught how to do so is next to impossible without making lots of mistakes along the way. Business writing must be practiced as a personal skill.
This course can also be customized in a way to focus on helping participants to write business English e-mails more quickly without sacrificing accuracy or clarity if that is their need.
　In this training program, participants will brush on up the fundamentals of English business emails, using the original training materials developed by Berkley Professionals based on business emails in a variety of industries as well as using participants’ own work e-mails so we can better focus on their own business writing situations and needs. After brushing up on the fundamentals, participants will receive practical instruction as well as feedback from other participants in order to effectively improve their ability to write clearly and accurately in a way that correctly reflects the relationship they have with their reader(s).
　Business writing is a skill in which mistakes can be very costly. Even when two Japanese people are interacting through email, there are rare cases where one might send a business email that can cause misunderstanding. However, in such a case both people are communicating in their native language so this can generally be diffused quickly and will not become a major issue. However, this could become a significant problem when communicating with someone who is not Japanese and perhaps on the other side of the world. In order to prevent this from happening, participants in this course will engage in writing exercises, and will receive feedback from trainers and other participants on several occasions. This will allow participants to effectively improve their business writing skills, and even learn new ones.