The Volunteer Welcome Email
At an international summer school, the student council is welcoming 18 volunteers from six countries. Most volunteers are 19-24 years old; three are teachers in their fifties. The council drafted this email:
'You must send me your passport copy by Monday. I need it. Also, you have to tell us your dietary requirements. Don't be late on the first day. If you will have any questions, contact me.'
The coordinator, Mei, worries the email sounds rude to volunteers who do not know the council well. In some volunteers' cultures, direct imperatives from a younger stranger can signal a demand rather than a request; in others, a softer form might seem vague. The school wants a polite, clear email that still gets the documents by Monday. Mei has one hour to revise it before the message is sent to all 18 volunteers.
1. Identify two pragmatic problems in the draft and explain why they could cause misunderstanding for this group.
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Two pragmatic problems are the bare imperatives and the mixing of intimacy with authority. 'You must send me your passport copy' and 'Don't be late' are direct commands from a younger student council member to volunteers who have not yet met her. In many varieties of English this is grammatical, but in context it can sound like an order rather than a request. 'I need it' makes the writer's needs the centre of the message. The phrase 'If you will have any questions' is also a nonstandard conditional; standard English uses 'If you have any questions'. For a mixed-age international group, the email should use conventional indirect requests ('Could you please...') and explicit thanks, while keeping the Monday deadline visible.
2. Rewrite the two sentences about the passport and dietary requirements using appropriate modal and politeness strategies. Keep the Monday deadline explicit.
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Passport: 'Could you please send a copy of your passport by Monday? We need it for registration.' Dietary: 'Please also let us know about any dietary requirements by Monday so we can arrange meals.' The modal 'could you please' frames the action as a request for cooperation rather than an obligation imposed by the writer. 'We need it for registration' gives a reason, which makes the request easier to accept. The deadline remains explicit, so politeness does not create vagueness. 'Let us know' is less face-threatening than 'you have to tell us', and 'please' marks the sentence as a request.
3. Explain why replacing 'You must' with 'Could you' changes the relationship between writer and reader, and why the school still needs a clear deadline.
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'You must' presents the obligation as coming from the writer's authority; 'Could you' presents it as a request that the reader can choose to accept. That shift reduces the power distance between a student council member and older volunteers, and it gives the reader room to explain a problem, such as a passport renewal delay. It does not remove the requirement: the deadline 'by Monday' and the reason 'for registration' still make the next step clear. In a cross-cultural group, neither extreme works well: bare commands can seem rude, while very indirect hints can seem optional. A conventional indirect request with a fixed deadline is the safer middle ground.