The art of emailing: Being polite and / or firm?

How to find the right wording for a request in a business email? How to tackle a delicate or potentially problematic situation in correspondence? Where does the fine line between assertiveness and impoliteness lie?

If you correspond with foreign colleagues, partners, and clients on a regular basis, these questions arise every day.

The course “Advanced Emailing: How to Be Polite yet Effective” is designed by the AWC trainer Tatiana Golechkova and aimed at helping participants find optimal solutions for business and academic correspondence. Throughout the course, participants expand their range of useful emailing language, explore politeness conventions of both English-speaking and non-English-speaking cultures, study strong and flawed email samples. Apart from discussing relevant real-life cases, participants have an opportunity to contribute examples from their own practice and receive the trainer's advice.

We are pleased to share the feedback we got from this semester's group:

• “The course was highly useful and exceeded my expectations. I enjoyed working in groups and doing exercises in real time. Writing mock emails as well as rewriting was especially helpful.”
• “I mastered the difference between formal and semi-formal formats and learnt what types of phrases are appropriate in each case. I liked working in the handouts because the exercises were really interesting and complicated.”
• "Thank you so much for letting me join this great course and become a member of an exciting team of HSE colleagues who shared their experiences in different issues. And of course thanks to Tatiana Golechkova, who presented some quite hard material in a clear and simple way and created tasks for both revising and getting new information."

Are you engaged in regular emailing in English? Would you like to hone your emailing skills? We would be happy to see you among course participants next year.