Writing in English at work can feel stressful – especially if it’s not your first language. In this video, I share practical, real-world tips to help you improve your workplace writing, sound more professional, and communicate with confidence in English every day. https://www.engvid.com/workplace-writing-tips-email-ai-sbar/

Learn more about the *S. B. A. R. method* for writing email: https://youtu.be/VcQ62U0GyGE

In this lesson:
0:00 Improve Your Work Emails
0:32 Simple emails take too long to write
1:31 Email greetings
2:42 How to start emails
4:14 How to say thanks in an email
4:50 How to end emails
7:13 Whats the right tone for work email?
8:02 Think about your audience
9:52 Are your emails too long?
11:27 Key words for email politeness
14:05 Organize your email messages

Transcript:
My name is Emma, and today I am going to help you improve your writing for work. Many English language learners work in English workplaces, and it can be so difficult to write emails or reports when English is not your first language. So today were going to look at some common problems people who work in English workplaces have when they write, and tips to help you with those problems.

So lets look at the first problem many language learners have told me they have. Theyve told me that simple work emails take them such a long time to write, and because theyre spending so much time writing basic emails, it takes away from time they could be spending on other work tasks. So Im going to give you some tips, if this is you, what you can do with this problem.

My first tip is its a good idea to learn and memorize some very common expressions that we use in emails all the time. I would recommend having some formal expressions for when youre talking to your boss or managers or people higher up in the company, maybe customers, and some informal expressions for when youre talking to your colleagues and your co-workers and people where you dont need to be so formal with. So lets look at some examples of this.

So "greetings" are the first thing you write in an email. For formal, if its morning or afternoon, this is a very easy one. You can say "good morning, everyone," "good afternoon, everyone," or if youre talking to a specific person, you could put their name. So you can use "good morning," "good afternoon." Thats formal, and its something that can work whether youre talking to one person or a group of people. If its one person, you just write their name after "good morning." You know, for example, "good morning, Mr. Peterson." "Good afternoon, Ms. Smith." Informal, you can just... If youre talking to a group who you work with, you can call them "team." "Hi, team," for example. Or "hi, everyone." These are both informal ways you can talk to on email. You can use "hi" in an informal way.

So lets look at some other key expressions that might be helpful to you to help you write quicker. So, youve written the salutation or the greeting, you know, "Dear Mr. So-and-so, hello, team." What do you do next? Well, one easy thing to do in an email is to say something about "I hope this email finds you well." Or you might say something about their week or their weekend. If you want to say this in a formal way, these are two great sentences you can use in formal emails. "I hope this email finds you well." I use this in so many emails. Its a really good sentence to memorize. Or you can say, "I hope you had a nice weekend." You can write this if its Monday. If its Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, you can write, "I hope youve had a good week." Both of those are great things to say to begin an email. If you want to write something informal, you might just say "hope". You might get rid of the subject word "I". You can say, "Hope youre having a great week." Or, "Hope you had a good weekend." Again, this is more informal for your co-workers, whereas this might be something you might write to a customer or your manager. So, once you have a memorized way to start an email, it really does cut down on the time it takes to start writing.

Its also important to have a way to say thanks in an email. Again, I would recommend having a formal way to say thanks. So, for example, "Thank you for your time and assistance." Thats very formal. Or, if youre doing something informal, like writing to your co-worker, you could say, "Thanks so much." I should also mention that when were speaking or writing informally, were more likely to use exclamation marks, whereas when were writing formally, we dont usually use exclamation marks, or we use them less frequently. Its also important to have a good way to end your email, and its good to have a formal way when youre talking to managers or customers, and an informal way when youre talking to your co-workers. […]