ABSTRACT In this paper, I describe my interaction as an English practitioner with my supervisor Vu Thi Thanh Hoa M.A who had many valuable experiences in English Faculty This thesis presents and assesses the difficulties in writing reports in Sales Department of Tien Vinh Trading Investment Limited Liability Company to help them have a general understanding of business reports and identify the common problems while writing a business report Experimental and quantitative approaches are employed in this study with multivariate statistical analysis steps and my valuable experiences within internship From the results of the analysis, it can be included that business reports play a vital part in international business and the difficulties as well as errors of writing a business report are completely easily resolved In addition, the research results also show some suggestions for improving English business reports writing skills as well as indicate the limitations of the research Key words: Report, Business Reports, Writing a Business Report, Structure of a business report ACKNOWLEDGEMENT A completed study would not be done without any assistance Therefore, I gratefully give acknowledgement to their support and motivation during the time of doing this research as a requirement of completing my Degree of English Business First of all, I am very grateful to Nguyen Thi Thanh Huyen M.A, the Dean of English Faculty and all of my beloved teachers whose helpful lectures on the field of valuable knowledge have enlightened the arguments in this study In particular, I would like to express my endless thanks and gratefulness to my supervisor Vu Thi Thanh Hoa, M.A Her kindly support and continuous advices went through the process of completion of my thesis Her encouragement and comments had significantly enriched and improved my work Without her motivation and instructions, the thesis would have been impossible to be done effectively My thesis has been done by contribution of all relevant staff So far, I would like to thanks to groups who took charge in the process of data collection and data entry for doing this research as a part of the project I also acknowledge my thankfulness to all respondents at Sales Department of Tien Vinh Trading Investment Limited Liability Company where data would be collected for their valuable time, kind assistances and support in participating in the surveys Besides, I take this opportunity to express my indebtedness to my parents for their endless love, care and have most assistances and motivation me for the whole of my life Finally, I wish to thank my readers for their interest and comments on this study Ha Noi, April 22nd 2018 Student Tran Thi Kieu TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CO.,LTD Limited Liability Company LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table Parts of speech errors Figure 3.3.1 Grammar errors in writing business reports CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY Rationale Language is our primary source of communication It's the method through which people share our ideas and thoughts with others Some people even say that language is what separates us from animals and makes us human There are thousands of languages in whole world Each country has its own national languages in addition to a variety of local languages spoken and understood by all people in different regions Some languages are spoken by billions of people, including English Nowadays, with the development of the international relationship among countries, English is the most widely used language in the world of trade and commerce, becomes one tool that opens windows to the world, unlocks doors to opportunities, and expands our minds to new ideas As a result, having an excellent knowledge of English for business is getting necessary for success in any employee’s career As a senior of Thuongmai University, under the recommendation of the English Faculty, I had a great opportunity to experience as a trainee position at the office of the Tien Vinh Company After nearly two months working here (from January 6th to March 5th 2018), with the help and guidance of dedicated team leaders and staff, I have opportunities to apply the knowledge that I learned in practice, and learn the basic information to complete my internship report As far as I am concerned, writing business report is a very essential task in Sales Department Writing an effective business report is a necessary skill for communicating ideas in the business environment A report that details the last type could highlight a problem and suggest a solution which might involve analysing a business’s history, operations, problems, competition and goals, followed by a number of possible solutions (including their advantages and disadvantages) However, this skill of staff at Sales Departments is not really good enough which makes the work time-wasting, decreases their work productivity and other bad results Therefore, the topic “A study on difficulties in writing reports in Sales Department of Tien Vinh Trading Investment Limited Liability Company” is feasible and useful for staff at this department Furthermore, it is a strong hope that the study will be a useful reference helping improve writing skill for not only all staff at the company but also all students who feel interested in the job related to commercial documents Overview of previous studies As my research, in the world generally and in Vietnam particularly, there are a few the studies of how to write a good business report and reviewing some its common errors However, the studies mention to difficulties often dealt with while writing reports are limited While making this thesis, I have consulted it, selected some good ideas from the following studies: The handbook “How to write a business report” (by Orauariki, April 2017, Victoria Business School, p.4-p.9) brings all readers great knowledge about a good report and its characteristics In this book, the author deeply mentions purpose, structure of a report, emphasize the way to make a report clear, coherent and easy to understand for the readers The study: “Business writing skill” (By students of Charle Sturt University, 2008) reviews particular style and standard of some common correspondence type such as email, report, memos; mentions requirements and skills necessary for formal business writing Besides, the authors also instruct the readers how to make each of this type and give them quick writing tips in order to create a professional document These two studies are much valuable reference for me to this study Aims of the study The minor purpose of study focuses on helping Sales Department’s staff of Tien Vinh Trading Investment CO.,LTD to have a general understanding of business reports The major aim is identifying the common problems while writing reports, their possible causes of making these errors and suggested solutions Therefore, in this thesis, I would like to focus on: Finding out the outstanding problems dealt by all staff of Sales Department at Tien Vinh company Interpreting possible causes as well as effective solutions for these frequently made errors Research Subject The subject of this thesis is main difficulties in writing business report of Sale Department’s staff at Tien Vinh Trading Investment CO.,LTD which has mainly imported a various series of industrial and pure chemicals from America, Singapore, Philippin, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan Scope of the study Making reports is an indispensable part of doing business as well as business correspondence Moreover, because of limited time and knowledge, the study only concentrates on finding out the most common problems made by all staff of Sales Department at Tien Vinh company when they write daily, monthly or annual business report This study is carried out within my internship (lasting from January 6th to March 5th this year) Then, I hope to be able to identify biggest problems of writing reports and help these employees draw effective solutions to increase their work productivity Research methodology Doing this study, I use experimental and quantitative research methodology In order to attain the primary aims, I have consulted several ideas from my supervisor, manager and some colleagues All the theories have been carefully selected and gathered through reference books and documents in the Internet as well In addition, the survey was conducted for all staff of Sales Department about their assignments, evaluations about their matters and the difficulties that they have to cope with when writing business reports Direct interview: Three employees who achieve the best results at this department are directly interviewed to explore their recognition, attitudes, evaluations of the matter and the difficulties Organization of the thesis Besides introduction, table of contents, list of abbreviations, list of tables and charts, the main content of the study is divided into three chapters below: Chapter 1: “Overview of the study” shows the reasons to choose the study, the aims, scope, methods and design of the study Chapter 2: “Literature reviews” aims to answer all general questions related to business report writing as well as theoretical background of difficulties in writing business report Chapter 3: “Findings” This chapter refers to the analysis and the findings obtained from survey questionnaire and direct interviews made to staff of Sales Department at Tien Vinh Trading Investment CO.,LTD This results examine the real situation of writing reports at the company Chapter 4: “Recommendations and suggestions” The research proposed solutions to enhance reports writing skills of Sales Department’s staff at Tien Vinh Trading Investment CO.,LTD” deals with techniques and lesions that can be applicable to improve business writing report skills of all staff at the company 10 Parts of speech Subject/verb agreement Articles Tenses Independent/dependent clauses The pie chart illustrates the most frequently noted grammar mistakes of Sales Department’s staff in writing business report At first glance it is clear that significant difference between main errors According to the given data, Parts of speech errors account for the largest proportion, up to 42.6%, as nearly twice as Subject/verb agreement and Articles ones Only 9.6% and 4% mistakes related to Tenses and Independent/dependent, respectively These figures mean that sales staff not really master grammar knowledge, particularly Parts of speech Part of speech In the English language, words can be considered as the smallest elements that have distinctive meanings Based on their use and functions, words are categorized into several types or parts of speech The term “part of speech” refers to the categories: verb, noun, adjective, adverb, pronoun, article and preposition Some non-native speakers of English have difficulty selecting the appropriate part of speech This is particularly a problem for speakers of languages in which the form of a word does not change when the grammatical role of the word changes This is also the most frequently-made error while employees draft an English business report Of all my collected business reports, there are 8/14 reports with parts of speech errors, equivalent to 57 per cent and 92/228 errors (42.6%) Error 25 Q name Noun/verb confusion uan tity Noun/adject ive confusion Adjective/ad verb confusion 1 Confusion with pronoun form 5 Confusion with different forms of same root noun Confusion with adjective form Table Parts of speech errors As can be seen from the table, noun/verb confusion ranks 1st with 27/70 errors, equivalent to 38.5 per cent 11 adjective/adverb confusions and 13 confusions with adjective form ranks 2nd and 3rd, accounting for 15.7 per cent 18.6 per cent respectively These figures disclose that some staff of the department have a gap in knowledge about usage of parts of speech 26 For examples: Affect / Effect Affect is a verb, for example “Sometimes, the marketing strategy affects my sales.” Effect is a noun, for example “The effect of marketing strategy on our company’s sales is reasonable.” By using “the effect” you need to determine whether to use “affect” or “effect” since “the” will not work in front of a verb To add to the confusion, bear in mind that some people may use “effect” as a verb (for example “Contractors seek to effect a settlement with strikers”) but this usage is slightly archaic and most often used in legal writing Articles An article is a word that is used with a noun to specify grammatical definiteness of the noun, and in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope The articles in English grammar are “the and a/an”, and in certain contexts some "An" and "a" are modern forms of the Old English "an", which in Anglian dialects was the number "one" and survived into Modern Scots as the number "owan" Both "on" (respelled "one" by the Norman language) and "an" survived into Modern English, with "one" used as the number and "an" ("a", before nouns that begin with a consonant sound) as an indefinite article In many languages, articles are a special part of speech which cannot easily be combined with other parts of speech In English grammar, articles are frequently considered part of a broader category called determiners, which contains articles, demonstratives (such as "this" and "that"), possessive determiners (such as "my" and "his"), and quantifiers (such as "all" and "few") Articles and other determiners are also sometimes counted as a type of adjective, since they describe the words that they come before After carefully reading all my reports, I found 29 mistakes in using wrong articles, mainly in using “a-the”, this – these”, “that-those” 27 For example: • Incorrect “Divide my group into the small groups of or people and develop marketing plan for the new product.” • Correct “Divide my group into small groups of or people and develop marketing plan for a new product.” Rules about the use of articles in English: One is that all singular countable nouns should be preceded by an article If the reference is general the indefinite article ‘a/an’ should be used If the noun is plural and the reference is general no article is Tenses Choosing the appropriate tense for the context can be a big problem A common mistake in writing is confusion among some tenses such as near future tense and the present progressive with a future meaning, past perfect and present perfect With this error, I just explore 22 ones – quite small ratio However, English tense is the most important field, it is the reason why every English course nearly starts with tense lesions Therefore, making tense mistakes sometimes is considered as unacceptable ones for those who are mostly working in international environment For example: • Incorrect “In this report, we will introduce the features of our new product and offer our selling 28 strategy.” • Correct “In this report, we introduce the features of our new product and offer our selling strategy.” This is a sentence in the introduction to a report identifying the subject of the report In such a sentence it is common to use the simple present tense It would be incorrect to use the future tense or the present perfect The mistake has no effect on the meaning of the sentence, however, makes the report non-professional in English • Punctuation and spelling Punctuation is simply about a series of conventions that make it easier for readers to follow your train of thought A complete sentence (one thought or idea) is indicated by a full stop (.) A pause in the flow of thought, for example, to allow additional information, is indicated by a comma (,) A semicolon (;) is used to indicate a fuller pause than a comma, but not the final end of the sentence A colon (:) is used to indicate the beginning of a list 3.1 Full Stops Full stops are used to divide text and create boundaries by marking the end of a sentence • Make sure that your full stops look like full stops and that they are distinct from commas • Make sure that the letter following a full stop is always a capital letter and looks like one • Remember, feedback from your lecturers that points out that there are too many commas in your writing may well mean that your commas are doing the wrong job After you have completed one sequence of thought, indicate this with a full stop Then move on to the next one Punctuation and spelling are also issues faced by a majority of staff while writing report No one likes to read a text which runs into a page or two without punctuation marks in between Sentences must be clear and brief in any kind of writing Commas and semi colons help the readers grab the content easily and effectively The ability to spell words correctly is another important quality Some spelling mistakes might lead to seriously misunderstanding 29 For example: Ex1 “The employee’s requirements” (apostrophe before the 's = The requirements of one employee) “The employees’ requirements” (apostrophe after the s’ = The requirements of many employees) Ex2 Incorrect: “Were going to welcome our partner, Mr Dat, Direct of Gia Linh Chemical Limited Company at the next Friday.” Correct: “we’re going to welcome our partner, Mr Dat, Direct of Gia Linh Chemical Limited Company at the next Friday.” • Structure of report As with an essay, the writer of the report will be able to determine the structure after having identified the key message Having established the type and purpose of your report, they need to plan before beginning writing Reports are generally more formally structured than essays, so as well as identifying and organizing the main themes/parts, you will need to rationalize these into sections such as in above guide (part 2.1.5 Structure of a business report) However, depending on the main topic/industry of the report, the writer can also use other structures, freely leave out a part if the report does not really need it (such as not “Procedure or method of gathering information”, “Reference list” when writing daily sales report) As I mentioned in the previous part, sale report at Tien Vinh Trading Investment CO.,LTD is divided into five types: daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual report Daily report is free and easy to draw up and depends much on your sales that day Three next types are more complicated with more figures and charts, often gather sale results of a team of to people, and its reasons On the contrary, it is the most difficult to draft an annual report because there are many way 30 to organize this content as well as the writer is required to have an overall view of company in whole year to make the best proposal for further developments After my full-three-month-internship, I get a chance to write daily, weekly, monthly report At the beginning, it is quite hard to it since I not know specialized language and the structure, then got gradually used to it However, almost staff have worked at this department for more than one year, so, not have difficulty in doing it 3.2 Writing Style Writing style is the manner of expressing thought in language characteristic of an individual or an organization Beyond the essential elements of spelling, grammar, and punctuation, writing style is the choice of words, sentence structure, and paragraph structure, used to convey the meaning effectively The former are referred to as rules, elements, essentials, mechanics, or handbook; the latter are referred to as style, or rhetoric The rules are about what a writer does; style is about how the writer does it While following the rules drawn from established English usage, a writer has great flexibility in how to express a concept The point of good writing style is to Express the message to the reader simply, clearly, and convincingly; Keep the reader attentive, engaged, and interested; Display the writer’s personality; Demonstrate the writer’s skills, knowledge, or abilities A very short report will only prove that the writer did not spend enough time on research and analyzing the problem Instead, make your report as long as it should take in order to detail everything Besides, writing in a literary way is a challenge for staff in writing English report A report is not an essay, and it is not literature or fiction, so, the writer should definitely use highly specialized terms and 31 common phrases to his/her report Other aspects affect to report’s quality are much considered such as disorganized information, lacking of data/raw materials etc At Tien Vinh Trading Investment CO.,LTD, writing style of Sales staff is rather diverse with writer’s personality Daily, monthly or quarterly reports are carefully made with available forms It also depends on the sales of each staff and his/her reason leading to that results In general, from collected data, business reports are written with standard form and full of content Because of my limited internship, I have no chance to get annual reports of company which is my regretful deficiency in order to make the thesis more fulfill 32 CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS Basing on the information collected from the questionnaire as well as the interview questions, I recognize the two biggest challenges for staff at Sales Department at Tien Vinh Trading and Investment CO.,LTD in writing reports are English knowledge and writing report style This part of the chapter presents some suggestions that will hopefully provide more insight into the learning of writing business reports in generally, meliorate their vocabulary and grammar structure as well as give a new idea for better writing skill 4.1 Suggestion on improving vocabulary The above figure showed that there are 8/14 reports with vocabulary errors, equivalent to 57 per cent Therefore, it is big problem for almost staff at Sales Department It is undeniable that reading is the best effective way to enlarge vocabulary When reading, they can see lot of words being used in certain context and it is the factor that makes reading more effective than learn-by-heart the new word lists If the staff are not able to infer the word’s meaning during their reading process, it is a good chance to guess its meaning just by understanding the overall text When they are familiar with this habit, they will raise their level up by reading more difficult one in a variety of topics Facing another problem in memorizing the word’s meaning, it is very easy to forget the new word’s meaning just some days later if they not have a regularly review, therefore, they will lose these learned words unintentionally Therefore, they should try to use their newly learned words in as many ways as possible At Sales Department, it is available for each staff to own his/her computer, so they can take full advantages of helpful tool such as sticky notes to learn new words easily By that way, whenever students work with their computer, they can see these words frequently and thus memorize them By that constantly practicing, hopefully that they will make their collection of vocabulary richer and richer, and it is one of the shortest ways to avoid misused words in writing 33 Moreover, the writer also should make up as many associations and connections as possible When finding a new word, they should relate this word to the words already known Connecting the new word with its family words can help them easily remember and enlarge their vocabulary For example, the word “gargantuan” (very large) has a similar meaning to the words “gigantic, huge, or large”, so we can use: “small, medium, large, very large, and gargantuan” By that way, we will have a plentiful source of vocabulary to deal with new word’s problems in writing English Instead of learning on paper, it is possible to get new word by taking vocabulary test or playing with words online, for example, www.oxfordonlineenglish.com Additionally, a series books English Vocabulary in Use – Elementary (Michael McCarthy, Felicity O’Dell), English Vocabulary in Use - Pre-intermediate & Intermediate (Lynda Edwards with Stuart Redman) and English Vocabulary in Use – Upper – intermediate and advanced (Michael McCarthy, Felicity O’Dell) could be a good reference material for those who want to study and improve their vocabulary 4.2 Suggestion on improving grammar structures As I analyze in the previous chapter, grammar is the basic elements of language Using a wrong grammar can lead to regrettable misunderstandings, so we need to be careful in using grammar structures To be better at English grammar, we have to practice doing grammar exercises regularly At Sales Department of Tien Vinh Trading and Investment CO.,LTD, a few staff not have gasp knowledge about English grammar leading frequently – made mistakes in writing report particularly and in communication generally In this case, it is necessary to take part in English course for grammar lessons They also practice themselves by doing online exercises just by some simple clicks There are a number of websites, which offer exercises on a wide range of topics Some common and useful web pages to learn English grammar are http://webster.commnet.edu and http://www.tienganhonline.net/grammar.htm, which 34 provide useful grammar exercises with available answer key to help learners be familiar with grammar structure forms Alternatively, learners can access the webpage http://lopngoaingu.com or http://www.tienganh123.com, which are very common to learner at every levels of English I also would like to suggest them some reliable grammar books that offer answer keys and clear explanations for each grammar point “English Grammar in Use” (Raymond Murphy – Available in Vietnamese), “Oxford Practice Grammar with Answers” (Norman Coe, Mark Harrison, Ken Paterson) and the series book consist of Grammar Practice for Elementary Students, for Pre-intermediate Students, for Intermediate Students, and Grammar Practice for Upper Intermediate Students (Elaine walker , Steve Elsworth) can be considered as helpful tools for those who want to improve their grammar quickly and effectively 4.3 Suggestion on improving writing skills As mentioned featured characteristics of a business report in Chapter 2, it is very important because it can have serious consequences and affect decisions Thus, when writing report, writer should pay much attention to avoid regrettable mistakes Below are some common techniques collected from my experiences and previous studies to enhance report writing skills of Sales’ Department at Tien Vinh Trading and Investment Co.,LTD: Define purpose of the report It is called a “report” because it “reports on” something, so, the writer should identify the purpose before starting to write report It will save lots of time rewriting later on and prevent a sense of aimlessness from all content of the report Use the strategies of investigative writing to get the ball rolling Focus on answering the questions: Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How? Be clear & straight to the point One of the most important characteristics of a business report is enough information, clear, smooth Therefore, writing report should be focus on the topic, 35 wandering from main point is unacceptable, always follow the question Is this report exactly what your business is about? Use right format of a business report Making an outline for the report can help you create a clear structure to follow Begin with an introductory section, and end with a concluding section Write a brief description for each topic or title in your outline to help you flesh out your thoughts and rearrange the structure of the outline as needed Structure of a business report is showed clearly in Chapter (2.5) And depending on the nature of report or business, you can choose to skip one or more sections In brief, with small tips above, this chapter is about my suggestions on how to improve English vocabulary and grammar structures as well as writing skill to help Sales Department’staff at Tien Vinh Trading and Investment limit the difficulties in writing business report 36 CONCLUSION All writing activities relating to business have one or more purposes and may be the main purpose of writing reports in particular and writing commercial documents in general as a means of communicating bilingualism among the peoples in the world No one can deny the importance of business reports with each company However, it is not easy for all people of mainstream English to master business reports writing skills as well as to become a professional academic writer So, the problem "difficulty in writing business reports" of the employee and to meets their expectations of getting better business correspondence writing skills were discussed in this study In my thesis, I pointed out some helpful suggestions and solutions that help them overcome difficulties and improve the quality of their business letters In addition, this is the first time I have had the opportunity to my own research, so making mistakes as well as limitations in the research process is inevitable Due to limited research time and my all ability, it is difficult for me to schedule interviews with the right questions as well as receive more information on employee expectations Moreover, to satisfy everyone is not really easy, some expectations are collected above cannot reflect all the errors and needs of employees in the company in particular as well It is, therefore, one of the most restrictive of the study However, I think that the thesis "Difficulties in writing reports in Sales Department of Tien Vinh Trading Investment Limited Liability Company” will contribute practical and useful to both internal and external staff as well as useful for others working in foreign trade environment I hope that the research with all the above suggestions will be a useful reference for improving the quality of writing English business report for everyone 37 REFERENCES “How to write a business report” (by Orauariki, April 2017, Victoria Business School, p.4-p.9) The study “Business writing skill” (By students of Charle Sturt University, 2008) Bataineh, R.F (2005) Jordanian Undergraduate EFL Students’ Errors in the Use of the Indefinite Asian EFL Journal, March 2005, Volume Issue 1, Article Chen, H C (1998) A contrastive analysis of the language errors made by the Chinese students of English as a second/foreign language Journal of WuFeng Applied Linguistics, 6, pp 224-237 Kuiper and Clippinger (Contemporary Business Reports, 2013) John M Lannon, Technical Communication Pearson, 2006 Corder, S.P (1967) The significance of learners' errors Reprinted in J.C.Richards (ed.) (1974, 1984) Error Analysis: Perspectives on Second Language Acquisition London: Longman, pp 19 - 27 (Originally in International Review of Applied Linguistics Corder, S P (1974) Error Analysis In J P B Allen and S Pit Corder (eds.) Techniques in Applied Linguistics (The Edinburgh Course in Applied Linguistics: 3), London: Oxford University Press (Language and Language Learning), pp 122154 Scott McLean, (2010) Business Communication for Success University of Minnesota 10 “Business report”, Eggins.M, Giblin Eunson Library (library.unimelb.edu.au/libraries/bee) 11 https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/writing-help/structuring-a-business-report 12 Sulaiman 1970 Practical English Grammar Surabaya: Indah Press 13 Veit, Allsop, 1986 Making Sense of English Grammar Jakarta: Binarupa Aksara 14 https://www.victoria.ac.nz/vbs/teaching/resources/VBS-Report-Writing-Guide2017.pdf 38 ... report of Sale Department? ??s staff at Tien Vinh Trading Investment CO.,LTD which has mainly imported a various series of industrial and pure chemicals from America, Singapore, Philippin, Malaysia, Indonesia,... made to staff of Sales Department at Tien Vinh Trading Investment CO.,LTD This results examine the real situation of writing reports at the company Chapter 4: “Recommendations and suggestions” The... vocabulary and grammar structures as well as writing skill to help Sales Department? ??staff at Tien Vinh Trading and Investment limit the difficulties in writing business report 36 CONCLUSION All writing