Example of academic email exchange between a PhD candidate searching for a placement with a
university of his/her choice and a faculty staff at the questioned university.


Dear Professor Collins,


Excuse me for approaching you and asking you for your help in the

following matter: I am currently a PhD. candidate at Masaryk

University, School of Humanities, Department of English and American

Studies. I work as a tutor of English for Specific Purposes at the

Language Center, Brno, Czech Republic. I intend to apply for a Fulbright Scholarship, which would
enable me to work on my dissertation at an American university. The award of the scholarship,
however, is subject to a preliminary consent of an establishment that would be willing to admit me.
And this is where my request comes in. Is there any chance of being offered a fellowship at the
Gervitz Graduate

School of Education? I would be enormously grateful if you could consider

me as a candidate for visiting research student under your supervision.

The fellowship (up to 10 months) would be covered by the scholarship in

question. The deadline is unfortunately December 1, 2007 for the academic

year beginning in the fall 2008 - I would need a written confirmation from

an American scholar that they would be willing to supervise me.


In my PhD dissertation, I am trying to analyze the structure and language

of written medical case reports as a style belonging to the genre of

research articles. The text analysis of such reports involves a

corpus-based research, undertaken primarily from the stylistic,

sociolinguistic and pragmatic viewpoints. The corpus, which I am currently

developing, will be approached both from the synchronic and diachronic

angles. In the former, my focus will be on characterization of the genre

as it is currently produced by the discourse community of medical

professionals. In the latter, an emphasis will be placed on the comparison

of differences between medical case reports written 1900 - 1906 and those produced

nowadays. In the dissertation I will draw on developments of both the

Slavonic (especially the Prague School - Mathesius, Vachek, Firbas, Danes;

among others Tarnyikova, Bakhtin) and Anglo-American (Crystal, Davy,

Leech, Fowler, Halliday, Hasan, Swales, Hoey, Bazerman) traditions in the

study of language.


Please find attached my Curriculum Vitae. If you require any additional

materials, I will be happy to supply them.


Thank you very much for your time and consideration.


Sincerely,

John Smith

personal page of the student: http://www.john-smith.muni.cz

Attachment: curriculum vitae