Generic Structural Features of Requestive Academic Emails

The aim of the present study is to analyze the generic structural features of requestive academic emails. For this purpose, 182 emails written by 81 Tunisian postgraduate students to their professor were analysed. The collected academic email messages share a main communicative function which is requesting. This study drew on the framework of genre analysis and employed the pattern of move schemata proposed by Swales (1990) and follows the typology suggested by Guffey (2010). The gathered emails are made up of the email’s subject line, an opening, body text and closing. The findings revealed that more than half of the subject lines of emails are either inappropriate, improper or do not exist. This shows that the participants are to some extent not able to write proper subject lines when addressing their professor however they did appear to pay attention to greetings in their emails. By examining the structure of the body of the gathered emails, it is noticed that postgraduate students tended to use the inductive style when emailing their professor. They do not go straight to the request. Instead, they go through some strategies (introduction, self-identification, apologizing, or reminding remarks, pre-request and request). The findings revealed that more than half of the emails either do not display perfect closings or do not display closings while the remaining emails are considered acceptable since they contain both greeting and the sender’s name. Accordingly, this study suggests some useful pedagogical implications. Tunisian EFL learners need to be supplemented with explicit instruction regarding teaching pragmatic issues concerning writing emails. The use of authentic materials in the context of pragmatics instruction is highly recommended Another practical method is to introduce and teach email writing guidelines and etiquettes so that Tunisian students can readily refer to them when writing emails. Keywords: structural features, request, email,  moves. DOI: 10.7176/JEP/10-19-03 Publication date:July 31st 201

Analysis of Academic Email Requests Written by Tunisian Postgraduate Students

This study analyses how requests are written by a group of Tunisian postgraduate students to their professor via emails. The aim of the present study is to examine the email requests in terms of the degree of directness employed and seeks to find out whether the directness level of Tunisian postgraduate students e-requests varies with increasing the imposition of requests. Results prove the reliance of Tunisian postgraduate students on direct strategies when requesting their professor. This is manifested in the preference for direct questions and mood derivables in requests for information and expectation want and need statements for requests for action. The findings also reveal no significant differences between requests for information and requests for action concerning direct strategies and conventionally indirect requests. However, a significantly higher number of hints was found in non-conventionally indirect requests for requests for action. Tunisian postgraduate students realized their requests for information and requests for action with different request realizations, but they displayed a preference for directness in both types of requests. The preference for direct requests strategies may enhance a negative effect on their evaluation by their recipient. This suggests that Tunisian postgraduate students have not acquired enough pragmalinguistic and sociolinguistic knowledge to request appropriately socially superior persons. Accordingly, this study suggests some pedagogical implications and suggestions for Tunisian EFL (English as a Foreign Language) instructors. Henceforth, Tunisian teachers and syllabus designers should devote more attention to developing Tunisian EFL learners’ pragmatic competence through teaching L2 pragmatics. Keywords: e-requests, politeness, directness, ranking of imposition