Table of Content Acknowledgement 2 I. INTRODUCTION 3 1. Preface 3 2. The company’s profile 3 II. REPORT OF THE ACTUAL INTERNSHIP AT PSO BUSINESS CENTER 6 1. The usage of English in PSO Business Center 6 2. My process in acquainting myself with the real working environment 7 3. The advantages and disadvantages 8 4. The knowledge and skills applied in the internship 9 III. EXPERIENCES AND LESSONS 10 1. Experiences and lessons from the internship 11 2. The effects of the internship on my personality / viewpoint 12 IV. SUGGESTION 12 V. CONCLUTION 14 VI. REFERENCE 15 VII. APPENDICES 15 Acknowledgement First, I wish to extend my gratitude to Mr. Nguyen Thai Viet Huy – General Director and Ms. Le Thi Thu Hang – Chief Executive Officer of PSO Business Center, who allowed me to do my internship in the company. 1 I also take this opportunity to convey my sincere thanks to Ms. Le Thi Thu Hang again, Ms. Nguyen Thi Kim Yen – chief of Finance and Accountant Department and and Ms. Nguyen Thi Phuong Truc – who directly guided me and help me solve my problems during the internship at PSO Business Center in Master Building. Everybody is such a friendly and cheerful companion here that supported me in mixing up the work environment. In addition, I would like to thank the Board of Rector of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, HCM city and teachers in the Department of English Linguistics and Literature, who have provided me with the best conditions for me to complete my internship in the best ways. Finally, I would like to express my thanks to Master Le Thi Ngoc Anh who has conducted me and helped me finish my internship report. I. INTRODUCTION 1. Preface 2 The purpose of this report is to represent what I did and learned during my 2 months internship period at PSO Business Center under the instruction of Ms. Le Thi Thu Hang – Office manager of PSO Business Center. The report first gives a brief description about Professional Serviced Office Consultancy Corporation (PSO Corp) or PSO Business Center (PSO) and English function in this center. Next, the report shall present an overview of the tasks I completed during the period of internship in details. Then the result as well as the experiences and lessons obtained shall be discussed and analyzed. I tried my best to keep this report simply and concise. It is hope that this report could reflect truly all my attempts in the whole internship period. 2. The Company’s profile Our country has been developing in the direction of the market economy. More and more companies have been set up with various business modes. These companies usually aim to an active and convenient business mode. Catching the need, Professional Serviced Office Consultancy Corporation (PSO Corp) or PSO Business Center was established which was based on office business - a new kind of business in Vietnam. Target of PSO is to provide shared office services including reception, meetings, telecom and IT connectivity, translation and free legal services… Besides, PSO has virtual office service for small and medium enterprises to develop their business. PSO virtual office provides all the benefits of a prestigious office location without the customer’s presence. Consequently, instead of the usual leasing of office space, PSO Corp is an excellent way to cut down risk in starting or maintain a business. There are PSO office services: 3 - Basic business services in office including Reception & Concierge Services; meeting & greeting your guests; taxi, car, airline ticket & hotel bookings; preferred rates with couriers… - Telecom and IT connectivity services - Communication services such as managing your message by phone or email, sorting and delivering mail and sending outgoing mail and faxes. - Supportive services such as translating, typing, designing websites… - Free legal service in case customers want to establish a representative office, agency or enterprise. 4 Board of Directors Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Account IT  II. REPORT OF THE ACTUAL INTERNSHIP AT PSO BUSINESS CENTER 1. The usage of English in PSO Business Center Main function of PSO is providing spaces and the most professional office services for customers. Additionally, thanks for its convenient positions in district 1 and 3; PSO attracts many inland as well as foreign businesses. The staffs use English in contacting with foreign customers and supporting them in any involved problems in office services. English therefore is used mostly in speaking and listening. For instance, in the office in Master Building, we have many foreign customers like Mr. Afghahi Mohammad of Exto Solutions Company – an Indian; he rents a working space for a person so he works by himself in PSO. Because working alone, Mr. Afghahi usually catches problems in Vietnamese documents or in using office equipment; at those times, 5 PVFC Building (The first floor) Master Building - Head quarter (The sixth floor) Master Building (The fifth floor) Receptio n Receptio n Receptio n he needs our help. Beyond, we also use English in phoning or sending notifications for our customer via email every day. Although English is an important requirement to PSO staff, only the office manager – Ms. Hang mostly takes responsible for contacting and working with foreigner customers. In PSO, communicating skill is required for all of the staffs in PSO. Therefore, most of the PSO officers at least can use English at basic level. 2. My process in acquainting myself with the real working environment. As my major is English Linguistics and Literature, I was arranged to work in PSO as Ms. Hang’s assistant. In addition, because PSO is a professional serviced company, my tasks were various and flexible. During the initial days of the internship, I was asked just to do simple tasks and there were not so much job for me to do; instead, they gave me a lot of time for observing all of the usual activities of a working day in PSO Business center. The main purpose of this observation was to familiarize me about the working procedure in the company. Because PSO is major in leasing officer, what I had to do in my first days in PSO were understand the service packages (A, B, C, D) and other services that a professional office need. Besides, because this is a general office for many companies, there is many people visit PSO every day, they can be our new customers or customers of the other companies. Therefore, it is very important to remember names and faces of people in here; we can identify them easily and give out suitable services quickly. One of my tasks was receiving mail, sorting them out and then providing notification and information of sender via email for PSO customers. This firstly seemed quite complicated to me. Actually, this process usually followed these steps: When receiving a mail or parcel, I had to check the customer’s list firstly to make sure whether the receiver was still our customer or not. Because we have a large numbers of customers 6 (virtual and non-virtual), the list is changeable and updated every day. After making sure about the letter/ parcel I would sign in the bill, then I sorted and numbered the letter/ parcel in customer’s mail list. Finally, I send a notification via email for the customer. PSO also provides meeting rooms and meeting facility. We have many meeting rooms available for rent every day. When PSO received an order, my duty was preparing the entire meeting room usages included rental: projector, conference system, IT support, beverage Besides, there are many contracts need to be made every day like office leasing agreement, working station contract, addendum and completion statement contract These contracts are different depending on the package (A; B; C; D) the customers ask for. My job was filling the form of these contracts in Vietnamese as well as English. This job was easy but it also confused me at first days. In each contract done, I have to read carefully and make sure about the numbers in it. Thanks for this task, I knew more about business procedures as well as business English in making a contract which may help me very much in my future job because I am going to work in business field. As I got familiar with almost the services in PSO, the supervisor sometimes asked me to introduce the office and the services when we have a new customer visiting the center. I really loved this job because I had many chances to communicate with people. Owing to this task I became more confident in contacting with everyone. 3. The advantages and disadvantages Although I have ever done many part-time jobs before, getting involved in a professional working environment like PSO was quite strange and challenging to me. I caught a lot of advantages as well as disadvantages. 3.1 The advantages: About the advantages, the first one is the friendliness that the staffs gave to me. Not only Ms. Hang who takes the responsibility to guide me, the other staffs were also glad to 7 help me in solving issues and answering my questions. Everybody in PSO were so friendly, they gave me a lot of constructive comments in my tasks. I regarded PSO is not only a professional working environment but also a warm place to join in. Another advantage, because my major is Translation and Interpreting, when contacting with documents in English, I was not very perplexed. With all of my knowledge in translating, I could help Vietnamese customers in understanding many English documents and vice versa with the foreigners. 3.2 The disadvantages: Firstly, PSO is quite a professional and active working environment, everyone did their jobs in harmonious and effective ways while I considered myself was quite shy and inexperienced in here. During the initial days I could not catch up with the working processes and I usually took a long time to complete a task. Besides, communicating skill is one of my weak points I found when working at PSO Business Centre. I had to contact with many people every day in both English and Vietnamese, being not good at communicating skill caused me to be misunderstood in some situations. Customers sometimes had to repeat or explain their demand clearly for me to get it. I also caught a little problem in translating English document relating to business knowledge. Because every field of business has its particular terms, translating a document sometimes made me confused a bit. Especially I caught problem with economic and legal documents which sometimes I was asked to translate for our customers. Fortunately, I got through the problem thanks for internet facility; I usually searched in internet to know the meanings of particular terms in these documents. 3. The knowledge and skills I applied to my work 8 During the internship, I had chance to apply the knowledge and skills, which I had studied in 4 years in the university to support me in the internship at PSO Business Center. Being an English student enabled me to use English fluently in work. With the four Basic English skills including listening, reading, writing and speaking, I got no much difficulty to contact with foreigners at PSO. For instance, I used my writing skills in making notifications, contracts. Especially, speaking and listening skills were used frequently in contacting with foreigners. Truly, working at PSO gave me an environment to use all of my English skills, which I studied in my university. Besides, I got chance to apply the knowledge and skill of translation in translating English documents. These documents often were notification of payment, services description…so they were quite simply and easy to understand and translate. I usually took this task in order to support companies in their business. I was so interested in doing this duty as I had opportunities to improve my translation skills as well as get some knowledge in business. In addition, the Secretary and business English courses helped me a lot. Thanks for the knowledge I could compose some business texts, letters and documents for customers in both English and Vietnamese. In PSO, Virtual customers are not in PSO frequently so PSO plays the role of an intermediate between them and their customers. In this way, using notifications is one of working procedures of PSO. I usually did this task to contact with virtual customers; these notifications were sent to them via email every day. There were many kinds of notifications I made, but no matter what the notification was, it has to be formal and effective. In fact, the knowledge I studied in university is quite different from the one I get from the internship. Therefore, the chances for me to apply what I studied were not much. However, I consider that knowledge is a stable basement, which will enable me to adapt to any practical working environment. 9 III. EXPERIENCES AND LESSONS 1. Experiences and lessons from the internship The internship brought back to me a lot of useful experiences and lessons, which I hardly get in my university. The first lesson is how to remember effectively. When doing my tasks in the internship period, I was usually perplexed because I could not remember completely what I had been asked for. Perhaps I had not got used to the quick working process here so I sometimes forgot one of the tasks that I was required to do. Once, a foreigner asked me to help him scanning some pages from a document. At that time, I was busy so I delayed this tasks a bit, finally when I had free time to do it I forgot what pages need to be scanned in the document. It seemed to be a tiny problem and I could ask him again. Nevertheless, my mistake lost the pride of a professional office in customers’ view. Consequently, I knew the importance of remembering not only in interpreting but also in every work. To overcome this weak point I took note the tasks I had to do immediately when I was asked. In addition, when I was doing everything evenly the tiny task I always concentrate on it. Day by day, I made a progress in remembering, I did not need to ask the manager or customers to repeat their requirements for me anymore. Another lesson is about the importance of observation. I used to think that I was just in an internship job so I was not care so much to all of people in PSO. Moreover, it is quite hard to remember faces because there are so many people in this center. However, I finally regarded that if I had observed everyone and everything in my work better, I could have saved my time and got easier in my job. For instance, I could not give out an answer quickly if everyone asked me a question like Is Mr. A here. Is there any meeting room available? I usually asked the others to get the answer. I gradually knew that having a good observation skill could impress myself in other’ view and help work procedure more easily. Therefore, I tried to remember all the name of familiar customers in PSO, took notice of what was happening in this center…Thus, I aided the office manager in managing this center better. 10 [...]... for all of the staffs of PSO Business center I regarded that most of them are not good at using it For this problem, the manager arranged a staff who can use English well at each branch However, this solution is not perfect For instance, the office at district 1 is a new branch and there is just one PSO staff can use English there When the staff was not in the office, I would be asked to move to there... about myself, what environment I want to engage in after my graduation, what job I really love 11 SUGGESTIONS IV • For PSO Business Center After a time of working with the staffs at PSO Business Center, I have a plan to address the company’s difficulties related to the use of English at the workplace An English document with common sentences used for office should be shared out for all of the staffs Although... in progress to be done PSO is a convenient place for communication; the staffs always have many chances to practice English so I believe that they can make a progress quickly • For Department of English Linguistics and Literature During the time I was working at PSO, I regarded that I lacked some knowledge that is needed for actual working Therefore, I hope that my suggestion to the Department about... to support the others Thus, just a member knowing English in each center is not enough If all the members of PSO can use English well, I think the company will attract more 12 foreign enterprises to move in PSO center Therefore, I think the manager should push up her plan in supporting English skill (especial communicating skill) for the members I told my idea about an English document for the staffs... to PSO with the hope that this company will better in English usage PSO should have an English document to support the staffs in using English By this way, I believe that the company can attract more foreigners Moreover, after passing a time of practical working, I consider that Department of English Linguistics and Literature should have 14 more courses that are practical for students like Study of. .. suggestion that our Department should have more courses, which support students in translate economic or legal texts Thus, we will have enough knowledge to translate documents in economic or legal fields 13 V CONCLUTION Overall, the experience of working and learning at the same time in such professional business center is great It will be an unforgettable time of my life when I learnt the way to behave... especially in PSO where is called as a professional office Quick and effective tempers are what a personnel need to have here Besides, always smile and bring comfortable face to work were PSO style of work Looking at working style of the staffs here, I myself got experience in wearing formal and elegant in a professional office where you has to welcome many visitor every day and because you could be the general... general face of many companies in this business center It was the fact that the dynamic working environment made me more active and agile I used to been afraid of communicating with people However, during this internship, because I had to contact with many people frequently I had many chances to improve my communicating skill in both English and Vietnamese Consequently, I am afraid of communicating with... effectiveness, profession, and flexibility in working Knowing well about my personality is one of my achievements I gained after this internship I defined that I always want to take part in an active and creative work environment as well as English is really indeed my favorite major Actually, I am trying to overcome my weak points day by day after the internship The internship met my expectation about a... http://www .pso. com.vn/index.php VII APPENDICES 15 The outside of PSO Business Center 16 17 The inside of PSO Business Center 18 ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA TP HỒ CHÍ MINH Trường Đại học Khoa học Xã hội & Nhân văn KHOA NGỮ VĂN ANH Cộng Hòa Xã Hội Chủ Nghĩa Việt Nam Độc Lập –Tự Do –Hạnh Phúc _ Mẫu 1: Phiếu chấm điểm- Dành cho GVHD Tp Hồ Chí Minh ngày … tháng năm 2012 EVALUATION SHEET (Phiếu chấm điểm dành . (CEO) Account IT  II. REPORT OF THE ACTUAL INTERNSHIP AT PSO BUSINESS CENTER 1. The usage of English in PSO Business Center Main function of PSO is providing spaces and the most professional office services. Table of Content Acknowledgement 2 I. INTRODUCTION 3 1. Preface 3 2. The company’s profile 3 II. REPORT OF THE ACTUAL INTERNSHIP AT PSO BUSINESS CENTER 6 1. The usage of English in PSO Business Center. instruction of Ms. Le Thi Thu Hang – Office manager of PSO Business Center. The report first gives a brief description about Professional Serviced Office Consultancy Corporation (PSO Corp) or PSO Business