Second and third paragraphs

Use a few short paragraphs to go into greater detail about your main point. If one paragraph is all you need, don't write an extra paragraph just to make your letter look longer. If you are including sensitive material, such as rejecting an offer or informing an employee of a layoff period, embed this sentence in the second paragraph rather than opening with it. Here are some common ways to express unpleasant facts:

We regret to inform you...

It is with great sadness that we...

After careful consideration we have decided...

Final paragraph

Your last paragraph should include requests, reminders, and notes on enclosures. If necessary, your contact information should also be in this paragraph. Here are some common phrases used when closing a business letter:

I look forward to...

Please respond at your earliest convenience.

I should also remind you that the next board meeting is on February 5th.

For futher details...

If you require more information...

Thank you for taking this into consideration.

I appreciate any feedback you may have.

Enclosed you will find...

Feel free to contact me by phone or email.

Closing

Here are some common ways to close a letter. Use a comma between the closing and your handwritten name (or typed in an email). If you do not use a comma or colon in your salutation, leave out the comma after the closing phrase:

Yours truly,

Yours sincerely,

Sincerely,

Sincerely yours

Thank you,

Best wishes

All the best,

Best of luck

Warm regards,

Writing Tips

Use a conversational tone.

Ask direct questions.

Double-check gender and spelling of names.

Use active voice whenever possible.

Use polite modals (would in favour of will).

Always refer to yourself as "I".

Don't use "we" unless it is clear exactly who the pronoun refers to.

Rewrite any sentence or request that sounds vague.

Don't forget to include the date. Day-Month-Year is conventional in many countries; however, to avoid confusion, write out the month instead of using numbers (e.g. July 5th, 2007)

Business Letter Self-Assessment Test

II. Are the following statements True or False?

1. With block format, all new paragraphs are indented.

2. In business letters a salutation is generally followed by a comma or a colon.

3. Business letters should be simple and easy to read.

4. It is advisable to wait a day between writing and sending an important letter.

5. The date on a business letter should appear after the salutation.

6. An "Enclosure" note should appear below the typed name of the sender at the end of the letter.

7. The first paragraph of a business letter should be comprised entirely of "small talk".

8. Contact information generally appears in the closing paragraph of the letter.

9. Identifying the audience is one of the first steps in planning a business letter.

10. It is considered standard formatting to include the recipient's address before the salutation in a business letter.

ТЕМА VІІ. ЖИТТЯ МОЛОДІ В УКРАЇНІ В СУЧАСНИХ ЕКОНОМІЧНИХ УМОВАХ.

I. Read the following text.

Problems of Youth

Life used to be fun for 'teenagers'. They used to have money to spend, and free time to spend it in. They used to wear teenage clothes, and meet in teenage coffee bars and discos. Some of them still do. But for many young people, life is harder now. Jobs are difficult to find. There's not so much money around. Things are more expensive, and it's hard to find a place to live.

Teachers say that students work harder than they used to. They are less interested in politics, and more interested in passing exams. They know that good exam results may get them better jobs.

Most young people worry more about money than their parents did twenty years ago. They try to spend less and save more. They want to be able to get homes of their own one day.

For some, the answer to unemployment is to leave home and look for work in one of Britain's big cities. Every day hundreds of young people arrive in London from other parts of Britain, looking for jobs. Some find work, and stay. Others don't find it, and go home again, or join the many unemployed in London. There used to be one kind of teenage fashion, one style, one top pop group. Then, the girls all wore mini-skirts and everyone danced to the music of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

But now an eighteen-year-old might be a punk, with green hair and chains round his legs, or a skin head, with short, short hair and right wing politics, or a 'rasta', with long uncombed hair and a love for Africa. There's a lot of different music around too. There's reggae, the West Indian sound, there's rock, there's heavy metal, country and western, and disco. All these kinds of music are played by different groups and listened to by different fans.

When you read the newspapers and watch the news on television, it's easy to get the idea that British young people are all unemployed, angry and in trouble.

But that's not true. Three quarters of them do more or less what their parents did. They do their best at school, find some kind of work in the end, and get married in their early twenties. They get on well with their parents, and enjoy family life. They eat fish and chips, watch football on TV, go to the pub, and like reading about pop stars. After all, if they didn't, they wouldn't be British, would they?

Vocabulary:

used to — раніше, бувало (+ infinitive to talk about things that happened regularly in past, but have changed now)

teenager — підліток, юнак

to worry — турбувати(ся), хвилювати(ся)

unemployment — безробітниця

chain — ланцюг

rasta від rastafari — растафарі (назва секти ямайських негрів)

do one's best — зробити якомога краще, проявити максимум енергії

get on well with — в ладу з

ІІ. Answer the following questions.

1. What is the difference between the life of today's teenagers and their parents when they were in their teens?

2. What do teachers say about today's students?

3. What problems do teens have today? Is it difficult to solve them?

4. What are the trends of today's youth fashion in clothes, music, and ways of life?

5. How does the mass media describe the young generation?

6. What is the author's attitude to the young people?

ТЕМА VIІI. НОВІ ТЕХНОЛОГІЇ У СВІТІ БІЗНЕСУ.

I. Read the following text.

Computers in my life

Computer studies is a subject in many schools. Many young people have personal computers. Ninety-six per cent of them are males of all ages. All of them spend an average of twenty hours per week on home computers. The majority of the adults also use computers at work. About one in three hundred computer owners, so-called computer addicts, spend almost all his time using computers. All the computer addicts are very educated. They have been interested in science and technology from a very early age and they are usually very shy people who like being alone.

A survey in a school showed that fewer girls are interested in computers because girls are less likely to have a computer. Even if they have one, they use them less frequently than boys. Possibly it is because we think of computers as something to do with Math and science, which are traditionally "male" subjects. Possibly it is because most of the computer teachers are men, who give the girls less attention. Possibly parents think it is less important for girls to have computer skills.

Computer addicts love debugging, develop programs and love learning programming languages. They learnt to communicate with other users through computer networks and the people they met in school and work think of them as experts who could help and advise when they had problems with their machines. A few spend their time “hacking” and one addict left a message on a computer of Buckingham House. Very few computer addicts play computer games, but many people use a computer exclusively for games.

Some parents worry about computer games because they think their children won't be able to communicate with real people in the real world. But parents do not need to worry. According to research computer addicts usually do well after they have left school. Parents also do not need to worry that computer addiction will make their children become unfriendly and unable to communicate with people. It is not the computer that makes them shy. In fact, what they know about computers improves their social lives. They become experts and others come to them for help and advice.

For most children computer games are a craze. Like any other craze, such as skate-boarding, the craze is short-lived. It provides harmless fun and a chance to escape.

If we didn't have these computer addicts, we wouldn't have modern technology. They are the inventors of tomorrow.

Vocabulary

male [meɪl] — чоловік; чоловічий

average ['æv(ə)rɪdʒ] — середній

majority [mə'dʒɔrɪtɪ] — більшість

owner ['əunə] — власник

to addict ['ædikt] — захоплюватися (чимсь); наркоман

survey ['sə:veɪ] — дослідження, огляд, опитування

debugging [di:'bʌgɪŋ] — finding and removing problems in computers and computer programs — пошук і усунення технічних і програмних неполадок у комп'ютерах

"hacking" ['hækɪŋ] (gaining access to computers when it is not allowed) — хакерство (отримання несанкціонованого доступу до комп'ютерів)

to do well — процвітати, досягати успіху