Cross-Cultural Email Etiquette

B1 · Intermediate1 hr 7 minBusiness EnglishLesson 8 of 8 · Outline

Aims

Goal: adapt one email message for readers from different cultures — right formality, right directness, right warmth — without losing the message.

The lesson, stage by stage

  1. Warm up5 min

    Warm-up: One message, many readers

    2 warm-up questions

  1. Reading10 min

    Reading: Navigating Cross-Cultural Emails

    Read a 254-word text about Navigating Cross-Cultural Emails

  2. Vocabulary8 min

    Vocabulary: Cross-Cultural Vocabulary

    7 items

  3. Reading10 min

    Reading: One announcement, three cultures

    Read a 400-word text about One announcement, three cultures

  4. Practice7 min

    Practice: Match the Cultural Style to the Email Phrase

    Matching exercise, 6 items

  5. Practice7 min

    Practice: Fix the Cross-Cultural Email Mistakes

    Error-correction exercise, 5 items

  6. Dialogue10 min

    Dialogue: Writing Emails for International Audiences

    Role-play: Practice adapting your email style for different cultural contexts. (3 lines)

  7. Discussion10 min

    Discussion: Your mission: your international email

    3 discussion questions

Open the full lesson

The remaining 7 stages of this lesson, with the procedure, the examples and the exercises, are included with Starter, along with the interactive version you can teach from. Lesson 1 of this course is free: the full plan is on this site, and a free account opens it in the interactive player.

Target vocabulary

In a Tuton account these words become your student's vocabulary deck, so they come back in practice between lessons.

etiquettehonorifichierarchyindirecthigh-contextlow-contextcultural norm

This plan comes from the Professional Email Writing course in the Tuton library. Browse all free lesson plans.