Choosing the Right Text Type for a Formal Request
A writing task asks students to produce 120-150 characters in Chinese. The situation: a student wants to ask a university language centre to change an oral test time because of a clash with a family funeral. The student has the centre's email address and the name of the coordinator, 王老师. Two drafts are produced. Draft A opens with 你好！最近怎么样？ then explains the problem casually and ends with 拜托拜托！ Draft B opens with 尊敬的王老师：, states the request, gives the reason briefly, proposes two alternative times, and closes with 此致敬礼. The marking guide rewards appropriate register, clear purpose, and a polite closing.
1. Which draft better fits the task, and what specific features of text type and register decide it?
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Draft B fits better. The task is a formal written request to an institution, so the text type is a formal letter or email. Features that mark this register include a titled salutation (尊敬的王老师), a clear statement of purpose near the start, a concise reason, a constructive proposal of alternative times, and a conventional closing (此致敬礼). Draft A uses conversational openings suited to a friend (最近怎么样), casual pleading (拜托拜托), and no formal closing, which mismatches the relationship between a student and a university office. Register is not just politeness words; it is the whole set of choices: address form, level of directness, structure, and closing. Draft A's Chinese may be accurate, but accuracy alone does not satisfy a task that specifies audience and purpose.
2. Draft B's reason mentions a family funeral. How should the student handle this sensitive information in 120-150 characters, and what should be avoided?
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The student should state the reason briefly and factually, for example 因家中丧事需要出席, without detailed description. In a formal request, the reason exists to justify the request, not to elicit sympathy at length. Detail such as describing the funeral or the deceased relative would be inappropriate in this register and would waste the limited character count. The student should avoid emotional appeals, exclamation marks, and repeated apologies. They should also avoid vagueness so extreme that the request seems unexplained; a short factual phrase is enough. The rest of the character budget should go to the specific request, the two proposed times, and the polite closing. This balance, brief reason plus clear practical proposal, is what the marking guide rewards, and it shows control of both register and text structure under a length limit.
3. Both drafts are within the character limit. Explain why length alone is a poor indicator of task completion here.
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Length measures quantity, not fitness for purpose. A 140-character draft can still fail if it omits the proposed alternative times, uses the wrong salutation, or buries the request. The task specifies audience (a university coordinator), purpose (change a test time), and genre (formal request), and each of these generates assessable content. A complete response must include a formal opening, the request, a brief reason, at least one alternative time, and a closing. Students should plan by listing these required elements before writing, then draft within the limit. In the exam, a shorter response that contains all required elements and appropriate register will outscore a longer one that is fluent but off-register or missing the practical proposal. Length is a constraint to manage, not a target to fill.