You already send hundreds of messages a week on WhatsApp, Snap, and Instagram DMs. Email is different: it is how employers, Citizens Information, apprenticeship boards, Intreo, and half the working world will get in touch with you for the rest of your life. The way you write an email tells the reader whether you take them seriously, before they read a single line of the body.
Chromebooks, laptops, and PCs are crucial tools for coding and digital skills education. Chromebooks are ideal for web-based applications and collaborative projects, while laptops and PCs support a wider range of programming environments and software for more intensive tasks like software development and data analysis.
.zipThink about the last text you sent a mate. If you pasted that exact message into an email to a Work Experience supervisor you had never met, what would they assume about how seriously you were going to take the placement? Now flip it: imagine you run a local café and someone texts you 'hiya can i come in mon for work??'. Would you bring them on? The same words in the wrong register tell the reader the wrong story about you.
Five pieces make up every formal email. If any one of them is missing or wrong, the email looks amateur regardless of what you are actually saying.
| Concept | Why it matters | Example |
|---|---|---|
| To / Cc / Bcc — To is the main recipient, Cc is a visible copy, Bcc is a hidden copy | Picking the wrong one either exposes email addresses you should not have shared, or signals something to the main recipient you did not mean to signal | Emailing a Work Experience supervisor with your teacher in Cc says 'my teacher is watching this exchange'; putting the teacher in Bcc hides that from the supervisor |
| Subject line — the one line the recipient sees in their inbox list before they open anything | A vague or blank subject gets skipped or buried, especially by busy employers and officials who get 100+ emails a day | 'Work Experience placement, confirming start date 14 Nov' gets opened; 'hi' does not |
| Formal register — complete sentences, proper greeting, no emoji, no text-speak, no u or tmr | An employer reads WhatsApp-style email as 'this person will not take the job seriously', even subconsciously | 'hiya will i be in tmr??' vs 'Dear Ms Walsh, could you confirm whether Tuesday is still suitable for me to start?' |
Attachment & .zip — files added to the email; .zip bundles several files into one | Most email servers cap attachments at around 25 MB, and a wall of loose files looks messy; .zip fixes both | Sending your CV, cover letter, and a reference as application_docs.zip is one click to attach and one click for the employer to download |
| Signature — your full name, role, and contact at the bottom of every email | The reader should know who you are without scrolling back up to your email address, which they probably cannot even see | Aoife Byrne | LCA Year 2 | 087 xxx xxxx — three lines that answer 'who sent this?' in one glance |
Compare these three subjects for the same email (a student asking a local hair salon if they can do Work Experience there):
The rule: a good subject line could replace the email body and still be useful on its own.
Compose a practice email to a fictional Work Experience supervisor (Ms Walsh) confirming a start date, with one short document attached. At the end there is a short bonus section that shows how to bundle several files into a .zip when you need to send more than one.
Things that regularly go wrong when students send their first real emails. Skim this before you send.
| Issue | Solution |
|---|---|
| The email bounces back: 'message too large' | Most email providers cap attachments at around 25 MB. Bundle files into a {{code:.zip}} (which compresses them), or upload the file to your cloud storage and paste a share link in the email body instead. |
| I clicked Reply All by accident and my reply went to the whole class | Check whether you meant {{btn:Reply}} (one person) or {{btn:Reply All}} (everyone on the original email) before you click. If it happens, send a short follow-up apologising. Do not ignore it. |
| Autocorrect changed the recipient's name or a key word | Proofread the greeting and the first line after writing the body. 'Ms Walsh' often gets changed to 'Ms Welsh' on phones; 'your' becomes 'you're'. Fix before sending. |
| The recipient says they never got the email | Check your {{btn:Sent}} folder first: if it's there, the email left your outbox. Ask the recipient to check their spam/junk folder. If it's not in Sent, check that the address is spelled correctly and try again. |
| My {{code:.zip}} is still too big to attach | {{code:.zip}} only compresses a little for photos and PDFs (they're already compressed). For large files use a cloud share link instead, or split the {{code:.zip}} into two. |
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