“Please make sure that there are no errors in the contents you fill in” only urges care at the time of filling in; it conveys nothing about the crucial procedure of which document the answers are to be written in, and where and how they are to be submitted. Even if it is placed in blank a, the response method remains unclear, so the employees who receive the email cannot return their answers, and the message does not work as a request email. As a sentence calling for care it is not wrong in itself, but it fails to perform the role that blank a should perform (stating the missing response method), and in that respect it is inappropriate.
×Incorrectイ
“Two days before the response deadline, we will send a reminder email to those who have not responded” merely announces the requesting side's future operational plan; it is not an explanation of the response method. Sending reminders is work carried out individually by the Human Resources Department toward those who have not responded, and it is not an element that must be written in the body of a request email addressed to all employees. Furthermore, what the superior instructs in multi-part question set A is to send reminders “two business days before the deadline”, so the wording “two days before the response deadline”, which replaces business days with a plain number of days, does not match the instructed items either.
○ウ
正解The correct answer is ウ. The body of an email requesting a questionnaire must state, without omission, all four of the following: the purpose of the survey, the target respondents, the response method, and the deadline (this is also the first of the items that the superior gave F in multi-part question set A, to which this question belongs). Checking off the given email body element by element, the purpose is satisfied by “in order to improve the workplace environment, we have decided to conduct a satisfaction survey”, the target respondents by “The target respondents are all employees”, and the deadline by “The deadline is the last day of next month”, and the contact for inquiries is written at the end as well. In other words, the only one of the four elements that is not written is the response method, and blank a sits exactly at the position where that gap is to be filled. Choice ウ, “Please fill in your answers in the attached questionnaire document, attach it to a reply to this email, and send it”, concretely conveys both where to write the answers (the questionnaire document attached to the email) and how to submit them (attach it to a reply to this request email and send it), so as a statement of the response method it is neither lacking nor excessive. Because it is an instruction to use the reply function, there is no worry that employees will mistype the destination address, and the collecting side can also reliably gather the response emails addressed to F, which is a practical advantage as well.
×Incorrectエ
In “Since the target is all employees, please be sure to observe the deadline”, the first half is nothing more than a rewording of the immediately preceding “The target respondents are all employees”, and the second half overlaps in content with the immediately following “The deadline is the last day of next month. We ask for your cooperation”. In other words, it merely repeats information that is already written and adds not a single piece of new information. Even if it is inserted, the response method is still missing, and the repetition also makes the body wordy, so it is not appropriate as the statement to put in blank a.
ここがポイント
It is basic practice to state four elements clearly in the body of a request email: the purpose, the target respondents, the response method, and the deadline. This kind of fill-in-the-blank question can be solved reliably by the following procedure: check off the elements already written in the body one by one, then choose the option that supplies the only element that is missing.
When questionnaires are collected as email attachments, give concrete instructions covering both what the answers are written in (the attached questionnaire document) and the procedure for submission (attach it to a reply to the request email and send it). Having respondents use a reply email prevents mistakes in writing the destination address and also makes it easier to check for responses that were not collected.