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Should business communication students be taught how to say “no”? A comparison of Flemish and US rejection letters in En

Should business communication students be taught how to say “no”? A comparison of Flemish and US rejection letters in English. Teun De Rycker Lessius Hogeschool | University of Ghent ABLA Conference | Leuven | 23-24 March 2007. Writing negative news messages.

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Should business communication students be taught how to say “no”? A comparison of Flemish and US rejection letters in En

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  1. Should business communication students be taught how to say “no”?A comparison of Flemish and US rejection letters in English Teun De Rycker Lessius Hogeschool | University of Ghent ABLA Conference | Leuven | 23-24 March 2007

  2. Writing negative news messages • a skill critical to interpersonal success and effectiveness in many people’s professional lives • “one of the most difficult tasks facing business communicators” (Salerno 1985)

  3. Most research • the content and arrangement of face-threatening acts and their impact on readers • rejections of job applications • within the same language community • within the same culture

  4. Research gap • rejections of business-to-business proposals • involving native and non-native speakers • across different cultures

  5. Hypotheses • H1a Flemish writers will make more language errors, will have a smaller range of vocabulary, will use more Latinate words, … than the US writers. • H1b Flemish will transfer L1 writing strategies to L2 writing. • H2a Both Flemish and US writers will use an indirect approach. • H2b The Flemish writers will use an even more indirect approach than the US writers.

  6. Corpus1 • 21 rejection letters written in response to business-to-business proposals • produced as part of an international business game between students at IUPUI (Indianapolis, IN) and Lessius Hogeschool (Antwerp, Belgium), 2000-2004 • no explicit writing or other instruction was provided

  7. Corpus2 • 12 rejection letters written by advanced non-native Flemish students (NNSE) and 9 rejection letters written by native US students (NSE) • 1 ideal Dutch rejection letter (Knispel 2006) • 1 ideal US rejection letter (Locker 1999)

  8. Analysis independent variable • Flemish NNSE versus US NSE dependent variables • textual variables • language proficiency • meaning and organizational structure • metadiscursivity

  9. Results • For all variables Flemish and US rejection letters show a nearly perfect positive relationship (r = 0.996, p < 0.01) • For all variables both Flemish and US rejection letters show a strong positive relationship with Locker’s ideal rejection letter (rF = 0.771 and rUS = 0.751, p < 0.01) and with Knispel’s ideal rejection letter (rF = 0.703 and rUS = 0.691, p < 0.01).

  10. Discussion1 H1a • Rejected. • Interesting differences (e.g. K1, K2, AWL) but none are significant. H1b • Unlikely. • There are very strong positive correlations between all letters including the ideal ones.

  11. Discussion2 H2a • More or less confirmed. • Both Flemish and US writers use an indirect approach (buffer, positive ending and procedural information) though not exclusively (33.3%).

  12. Discussion3 H2b • Rejected. • Flemish writers especially use a combination of both the indirect approach and the direct approach (45.4%). • US writers especially use the indirect approach (44.4%).

  13. Concluding questions • How linguistically and culturally dissimilar are Flemish and US college/university student writers? • What has been the effect of the interactive nature of the business game on Flemish students’ writing? • To what extent is European business writing influenced by US standards and how does this affect the need for transfer of L1 writing strategies? • What is the role of instructive writing interventions given that no explicit instruction took place?

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