“Our proactive reengineering initiative for training is going to be championed by our best-of-breed service partners, whose experiential…”One of my students, who works at a multinational company, gets emails like this all the time. She brings them in, I put them on the whiteboard, and we go through them line-by-line, trying to figure out what the hell her boss meant.
Said multinational is paying for the lessons, and they asked me to set an end of year exam. I wanted to make it a test of the English they actually use so, for this student, I based her test on a genuine corporate email that came my way. How would you do?
(A note to my British audience: this is a genuine test. Any hints of satire are only detectable to Britons, and will not cause any harm to Johnny Foriegner.)
(If you want to give your own students this test, I’ve put a prettier version on Google Docs so you can download the .pdf from there.)
Business Email English Test
Part 1: Reading
This is an internal email of the Operations Department of a multinational company. Read the e-mail and answer the questions.
From: Anton Haupt1. What does “I feel we should conclude on ...” mean?
To: Johnny Briggs; Gerhardt Lesser; Rahul Gupta
Date: 2012-03-09 12:23
Subject: Operations - Status and future procedure
When: Monday, March 06, 2012 2:00 PM-3:30 PM.
Where: Meeting hall (sorry, no room available...)
+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+
Hello all,
Having talked to all of you, I feel we should conclude on the operations procedure.
The goal of the meeting is:
Please go through your documentations and prepare what you feel is important to consider.
- get a complete overview about the current status including all achievements so far and all remaining open issues
- set a timeline when we want to solve the open issues
- define responsibilities who will take which parts
- pin down the overall process/ routine (suggest to assign to one responsible person for documentation)
Thank you!
Looking forward to a good discussion
Best wishes,
Anton
a) I want us to make a final decision
b) let’s have a meeting
c) we should hire a consultant
d) we must close this sale
2. What does “get a complete overview about the current status” mean?
a) consult the IT department
b) understand our situation
c) decide what to do next
d) read the minutes from our previous meeting
3. What does “all achievements so far and all open issues” mean?
a) salaries and bonuses
b) the things we have done, and the things we must do
c) our senior and junior co-workers
d) the problems with our IT system
4. What does “set a timeline when we want to solve the open issues” mean?
a) decide when we will do the things we must do
b) ask the IT department to make our problems higher priority
c) write a report
d) tell the CEO about our decisions
5. What does “define responsibilities who will take which parts” mean?
a) decide who will do the things we must do
b) write a job description
c) decide whose fault it is that we are in this situation
d) choose a job title
6. What does “pin down the overall process / routine mean” mean?
a) put a schedule on the noticeboard
b) decide what to do
c) make a daily routine
d) decide when our next meeting will be
7. What does “Please go through your documentations and prepare what you feel is important to consider.” mean?
a) please finish your paperwork before this meeting
b) please make a To Do list
c) please write an agenda for the meeting
d) please prepare for the meeting by checking your documents.
8. Which sentence is the best summary of this email:
a) Please send me all the information you have before the meeting.
b) We will decide what to do at the meeting. Please prepare.
c) We can’t make a decision, because we don’t have enough information.
d) We need help planning our schedule. We will decide where to get help at the meeting.
Part 2: Writing
Anton Haupt forgot to say what the meeting is about! It might be about the Strategic Consultation Exercise or it might be about the Corporate Vision Roll Out. You are Rahul Gupta. Write an email asking Mr. Haupt to clarify.
END OF TEST
Answers to Part 1
- a
- b
- b
- a
- a
- b
- d
- b
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