The Register Theory And Foreign Trade Correspondence Writing In Vocational Colleges

With the rapid development of Chinese economy and China’s opening to the outside world,its foreign trade has expanded greatly during recent years. Foreign trade correspondence (FTC),which is an effective tool for trade transaction between countries, has a special purpose. Brieflyspeaking, it refers to the letters between importers and exporters in the process of internationaltrade, aiming to terminating and implementing a trade transaction effectively.Vocational colleges (VCs), which have been the essential and key component of moderneducational system, have mushroomed in recent years. Most VCs have offered the course ofForeign trade correspondence writing (FTCW) for Business English majors or other majors witha view to cultivating their practical and professional talents, and enabling the students to copewith future correspondence writing in international import and export trade. To deal with fiercecompetition and be competent for future job vacancies, students are supposed to master thewriting skills of FTC, which involves genre features of FTCs such as format, diction andsentence patterns. However, for many students, it’s not so easy to learn it effectively, since it istoo specialized to understand or master it fully. Many students of VCs, who major in FTCW,cannot lay a solid foundation and use it freely after graduation. Actually, in other words, thepresent situation of teaching and learning of FTCW in vocational colleges is far from satisfactory;it has not realized its due value.Thus, 100 FTCs are selected at random from 5 FTC textbooks generally used by ForeignTrade majors or other majors in vocational colleges, which cover almost every step of theprocedures of foreign trade correspondence writing, and then a qualitative analysis of ForeignTrade Correspondence is carefully made. And typical examples from the FTCs are also listed ingreat detail to summarize language features and writing skills of FTC from the perspective ofRegister Theory.The research shows that firstly, FTC should not be considered as merely an agglomerate oflexical, grammatical or phonological systems and structures. It can be treated as behaviorsclosely linked to the participants in a speech event, to each other and to the medium ofcommunication itself. Secondly, FTC, as a special genre used in international trade has itsdistinctive features different from common letters. In terms of field of FTC, the FTC varies withthe letter content it intends to convey, which can be classified into different categories—letters of establishing business relations, letters of inquiries and offers, letters on price, letters of ordering,letters on terms of payment, letters on contracts, letters of shipment, letters on insurance,together with letters of claims and arbitration. In terms of mode of FTC, FTC is a special varietyof written English which purport to fulfill careful plans; hence it is characterized by uniquestylistic features in light of dictions, sentences and textual structure. In terms of tenor of FTC,The tenor of the FTC relates to the relationship between participants in some specific situations.The social roles have already been complied with and delimited, i.e. buyer and seller, buyer andproducer and so on. Thirdly, the writing skills of FTC are an important part of FTC teaching andlearning. Lexically speaking, the field of international trade determines the lexical particularityof FTC such as the frequent use of professional terms, abbreviations, unambiguous words andphrases, and so on. Syntactically speaking, FTCW prefers short sentences, the present and futuretenses, active voice, conditional clauses, elliptical sentences and declarative mood. Textuallyspeaking, short paragraphs are more desirable. Each paragraph should be planned in a logicalmanner with one paragraph for one topic. Additionally, the tone of FTC should be noted, whichmay be carefully represented at the beginning of salutation and at the end of closing.Although the study suffers from a few weak points due to its tentative nature, it still has afew important implications. Major findings contribute theoretically and methodologically to theFTC writing and analysis.Theoretically, in the present study, FTC language features and writing skills are carefullyexamined under the framework of Register theory. In such a framework, FTC is viewed from adifferent perspective from previous accounts of FTC. Every aspect of FTC, from lexical level tosyntactical level to textual level can be considered highly motivated or greatly influenced by itsspecial register. Hence, the findings based on this research will enrich the horizon of FTCWteaching and learning.Methodologically, the qualitative method adopted in the research foregrounds the languagefeatures in FTCs in terms of three variables of Register theory, therefore it can be counted as ahelpful complement to some quantitative studies on FTC teaching and learning.