This article presents selective findings from an ongoing study that investigates rhetorical differences in business letter writing between Vietnamese students taking an English for Specific Purposes course in Vietnam and business professionals. Rhetorical analyses are based on two corpora, namely, scenario (N = 20) and authentic business letters of request (N = 25). Two criteria, the notion of move (a meaningful unit in linguistic form contributing to the communicative purposes of a text) and linguistic properties, are used for rhetorical analysis, supplemented by analysis of data from interviews with student participants. Based on the findings and discussions, recommendations are offered for preparing students well for the business workplace through incorporating more authentic models and contexts into pedagogical strategies. (Contains 2 figures, 3 tables and 1 note.)