Coursera

Lesson | Business English Skills: How to Navigate Tone, Formality, and Directness in Emails (Coursera)

Offered by University of Washington,

This lesson is part of a full course, Business English Networking. Take this lesson to get a short tutorial on the learning objectives covered. To dive deeper into this topic, take the full course.

Class Deals by MOOC List - Click here and see Coursera's Active Discounts, Deals, and Promo Codes.

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:

Distinguish between formal and informal language
Distinguish between direct and indirect language
Choose the appropriate tone based on your relationship with your recipient, the context, and request

Syllabus

WEEK 1
Lesson | Business English Skills: How to Navigate Tone, Formality, and Directness in Emails
This lesson is part of a full course, Business English Networking. Take this lesson to get a short tutorial on the learning objectives covered. To dive deeper into this topic, take the full course. By the end of this lesson, you will be able to: (1) Distinguish between formal and informal language; (2) Distinguish between direct and indirect language; and (3) Choose the appropriate tone based on your relationship with your recipient, the context, and request.

Go to Class

MOOC List is learner-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Related Courses

Coursera

University of Pennsylvania

Introduction to Operations Management (Coursera)

Management & Leadership Business

Learn to analyze and improve business processes in services or in manufacturing by learning how to increase productivity and deliver higher quality standards. Key concepts include process analysis, bottlenecks, flows rates, and inventory levels, and more.

Nov 16th 2026

4 Weeks

Business Management Process Analysis

Coursera

University of New Mexico

Negocios Internacionales II (Coursera)

Management & Leadership Business

Vivimos en un mundo cada vez mas globalizado, en el cual el éxito en los negocios internacionales se ha convertido en el factor determinante del desarrollo económico y la prosperidad. Esta materia, Entorno Global de Negocios, Parte II, sigue a la primera materia (Entorno Global de Negocios, Parte I) e introduce al alumno a una comprensión fundamental de como administrar una organización o empresa internacional.

Nov 16th 2026

5-12 Weeks

Business International Business Global Market

Coursera

ESSEC Business School

L'avenir de la décision : connaître et agir en complexité (Coursera)

Management & Leadership

Ce MOOC a l’intention d’affronter et traiter des problèmes que rencontrent chaque personne, chaque groupe, chaque entreprise, chaque société, de façon de plus en plus aiguë et pressante ; dans notre temps d’évolution accélérée, de transformations ininterrompues, de mondialisation incontrôlée, d’incertitudes.

Nov 16th 2026

5-12 Weeks

Business Complexity Leadership

Coursera

École Polytechnique

How to finance your venture ? (Coursera)

Management & Leadership

The course aims at providing knowledge and experience to entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs generally start with a mission, a new idea that they want to bring to the world. If the idea is original, it is probably not expected by the market, which has to be educated. This is a very costly experience. Entrepreneurs need to gather capital at the start of the journey.

Nov 16th 2026

5-12 Weeks

Finance Business Growth

Coursera

Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Introducción a la Calidad (Coursera)

Management & Leadership

En este curso conoceremos la importancia que tiene implementar estándares de calidad y procesos productivos eficientes, para el desarrollo y continuidad de nuestra empresa o idea de negocio y así mantener su máxima capacidad productiva y seguir ofertando productos con los más altos estándares de calidad, para mantenernos siempre en la preferencia del público.

Nov 16th 2026

5-12 Weeks

Business Quality Quality Management

Coursera

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology - HKUST

English for Effective Business Speaking (Coursera)

Languages & Literature

This course aims to improve your Business English speaking skills by developing your use of vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, spoken communication skills within a Business context, and your ability to deliver professional business speeches for specific purposes. Skills learned in this course will be used in the cross-cultural communications course and help prepare you to deliver the professional business presentation in the Capstone project.

Nov 16th 2026

5-12 Weeks

Speaking English Language Communication Skills

Coursera

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Interest Rate Models (Coursera)

Economics & Finance

This course gives you an easy introduction to interest rates and related contracts. These include the LIBOR, bonds, forward rate agreements, swaps, interest rate futures, caps, floors, and swaptions. We will learn how to apply the basic tools duration and convexity for managing the interest rate risk of a bond portfolio. We will gain practice in estimating the term structure from market data. We will learn the basic facts from stochastic calculus that will enable you to engineer a large variety of stochastic interest rate models. In this context, we will also review the arbitrage pricing theorem that provides the foundation for pricing financial derivatives.

Nov 16th 2026

5-12 Weeks

Finance Business Calculus

Coursera

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Corporate & Commercial Law II: Business Forms, Financing & Governmental Regulation (Coursera)

Business

This course is the second course in a two-part series on corporate and commercial law. In this part, we focus on three main topics: business organizations, business financing, and governmental regulation. In the first module, we discuss the characteristics of a number of the most common forms of business entities, such as corporations and LLCs.

Nov 16th 2026

4 Weeks

Business Business Finance Commercial Law

Coursera

Georgia Institute of Technology

Lesson | Express Yourself: Pronunciation (Coursera)

Languages & Literature

This lesson is part of a full course, Speak English Professionally: In Person, Online & On the Phone. Take this lesson to get a short tutorial on the learning objectives covered. To dive deeper into this topic, take the full course. By the end of this lesson, you will be able to produce proper word stress and intonation in your speaking.

Nov 16th 2026

1 Week

English English Language Speaking English

Coursera

CentraleSupélec

Two Speed IT: How Companies Can Surf the Digital Wave, a BCG Perspective (Coursera)

Management & Leadership

Transform or disappear, the Darwinism of IT: In order to adapt to a digital world, a two-speed IT is needed. Despite the importance of IT in today’s digital world, Chief Information Officers (CIOs) often struggle to get their voices heard by executive committees. Faced with this challenge, IT departments are being forced to reinvent themselves to adapt their companies to the fast paced evolution of technology. The Boston Consulting Group has developed a business approach that allows IT to shed off its appearance of a heavy cost center and to adopt a new, more realistic persona as a quality service provider, partnering with users and the management.

Nov 16th 2026

5-12 Weeks

Business Management Technology

Coursera

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology - HKUST

Business English for Cross-cultural Communication (Coursera)

Languages & Literature

This course aims to prepare you for working in an cross-cultural Business setting. We'll learn about common cross-cultural theories and how they are relevant to everyday business practices in a globalised world. By combining all of your vocabulary, reading, speaking, and writing skills that you acquired in the previous three courses, you will learn how language plays an important role in cross-cultural communication.

Nov 16th 2026

5-12 Weeks

Culture Ethics English

Coursera

CentraleSupélec

On Strategy : What Managers Can Learn from Philosophy - PART 1 (Coursera)

Management & Leadership

In the expression “creative thinking”, the keyword is not creativity; the keyword is thinking. With the help of great philosophers, you will rediscover the art of thinking. To help leaders to be rigorous even without figures, great philosophers have lots of ideas. Managers are invited to rediscover the art of thinking. They should understand the role of mental models, realize the importance of cognitive bias, agree on clear definitions and efficient criteria etc. Creativity demands the ability to unshackle ourselves from conventional ways of thinking, to "think outside the box".

Nov 16th 2026

5-12 Weeks

Business Philosophy Innovation