Register and audience in a formal letter
A Year 12 student writes a formal Tamil letter to a municipal officer requesting repairs to a damaged footbridge near her school. Her draft opens with a friendly greeting she uses with relatives, includes the phrase 'you people never do anything', and ends with 'reply fast'. She also uses a colloquial spoken form for 'bridge' twice and a respectful honorific form once, inconsistently. The assessment criteria reward appropriate register, structural conventions of formal Tamil letters, and grammatical accuracy. She has one redraft before submission and asks whether she should simply replace the colloquial word with the formal one and fix the ending.
1. Identify the register problems in the draft beyond vocabulary and explain why each matters for this task.
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Three problems go beyond word choice. First, the opening greeting belongs to an intimate register; a formal letter to an official needs a neutral or respectful address form, otherwise the letter signals a relationship that does not exist. Second, 'you people never do anything' is a generalized accusation; it attacks the reader rather than describing the problem, which undermines the persuasive purpose and breaks formal decorum. Third, 'reply fast' is a spoken imperative; a formal request uses a polite request form and a conventional closing. Inconsistent honorific use is also a problem because it makes the writer appear unsure of the relationship. Each matters because the criteria assess register and conventions, not just vocabulary, so fixing only the word and the ending would leave the main weaknesses unaddressed.
2. Recommend a revision strategy that addresses structure as well as wording, and justify the order of changes.
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She should revise in this order: purpose and structure first, then register, then surface accuracy. Structurally, a formal Tamil letter of request should identify the writer and the matter, describe the damage and its consequence for students, make a specific request, and close politely with contact details. Fixing structure first prevents her from polishing sentences that may be cut or moved. Next she should rewrite the opening address, replace the accusation with a factual statement of the problem and its effect, and convert 'reply fast' into a polite request. Only then should she standardize the term for 'bridge' and check honorific consistency and grammar. This order works because register and structure are weighted criteria and because wording choices depend on which sentences survive the structural revision.