Hi

As I'm not an English native speaker, I often have troubles writing formal letters. Please could you take a look at my letter and rewrite it if necessary.

I'll leave my current position on September 30 and I want every single baht I believe they owe me.

Here it is :

To whom it may concern:

In June and July 2007, I taught eighteen hours a week (six classes). As each period taught equals three hours of working load, I, therefore, worked fifty four hours a week for eight weeks.

According to the Labour Protection Act, section 23, the “total hours of work in one week must not exceed forty eight hours”.

I would be grateful if the overtime could be compensated “within three days from the date of termination of employment” as stated in the Labour Protection Act, section 70.

Thank you for your help.

Yours sincerely,

Adjan JB

I would question your basic premise. If you were a contract employee and your contract was for 18 hours or up to some number (where I work it is up to 20 hours of teaching time), then that is what you are paid for. The amount of time it takes you to prepare, etc. is your own responsibility. For example the first year I taught, it took a lot of effort and time, the 2 year was pretty easy and by year 3, I had almost no preparation time and even had testing and correcting down to a minimum.

Best of luck to you.

I would question your basic premise. If you were a contract employee and your contract was for 18 hours or up to some number (where I work it is up to 20 hours of teaching time), then that is what you are paid for. The amount of time it takes you to prepare, etc. is your own responsibility. For example the first year I taught, it took a lot of effort and time, the 2 year was pretty easy and by year 3, I had almost no preparation time and even had testing and correcting down to a minimum.

Best of luck to you.

I understand your point. At my university most teachers teach between 3 and 5 classes a week (so between 9 and 15 hours). Anyway in the Handbook for Foreign Specialists and Lecturers that they gave us, it's stated that :

" a special vocabulary is used to define a teacher's working load: each period taught equals three hours of working load. The rationale for this is that teaching requires additional time for preparation and homework marking. Thus, each period is allocated three hours of working load as follows:

- one hour for preparation

- one hour for teaching

- one hour for homework marking"

JB, the word therefore is in the wrong place in the sentence, making it awkward, like an interruption. Also, the sentence is long enough to break in two. Or, you could begin the single sentence with since.

"Since each period taught equals three hours of working load, therefore I worked fifty four hours a week for eight weeks."

The rest of the letter looks fine. Not too formal, not too curt.