An Analysis of Business E-Mails Written by Arab Female Business Students

Writing is an important skill in students’ academic and professional lives and plays a substantial role in their everyday communication. As such a comprehensive multi-layered investigation into students’ writing becomes imperative to gain a better understanding of the issues students face while learning this skill. This study explores the business writing skills of Arab female undergraduate business students in the College of Business Studies in Kuwait using a genre approach to guide the analysis of the e-mails written by the students in their business correspondence module. An analysis of 44 students’ written formal and informal e-mails was thoroughly executed to investigate students’ competency in writing different e-mails with different styles and for different purposes. The data provided valuable insights into students’ practices while writing business e-mails and pinpointed issues students faced in their writing. Findings suggest that it could be beneficial and productive for ESP teachers to address the teaching of writing skills to business students using genre analysis in the hope of yielding better-written outcomes.