‘Dear Dr John Smith. I refuse to obey this mark. That’s mean. So, can you give me a higher mark?’

Abstract

This research studies a group of Chinese university students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) to analyse the macro- and microstructure of their emails and their pragmatic competence. In order to study the features and context adequacy of their email communication, a corpus of 200 emails written by 100 second-year students (sophomores) and 100 fourth-year students (seniors) was analysed to identify the uses and preferences concerning subject lines and opening and closing moves and to investigate the uses and functions of strategies related to disagreement in their communication to a faculty member. Findings show that both Chinese groups lacked standardisation in relation to the use of subject line and opening and closing moves. Data also proved that Chinese EFL emails were inappropriate due to insufficient mitigation, lack of acknowledgment of the imposition involved and lack of status-congruent language.