Produzione scritta: rispettare i vincoli quando la bozza è troppo lunga e troppo informale
Davide has 30 minutes left for the first writing task. The rubric says: write a formal email of about 120–140 words to the secretary of a language school. You booked an intensive B2 course (ref. 4471) for 4–15 July and paid a 90-euro deposit; the school has just cancelled the course because of low enrolment. You must state the problem, ask either for a full refund of the deposit or for a place in the August group, and set a deadline of 10 days for a reply. Davide's draft is 195 words. It begins «Ciao, scusa il disturbo, ti scrivo perché...», contains «cmq» and «x», and includes a long paragraph about his holiday plans. The rest is accurate and covers all three points.
1. What should Davide cut first, and what must never be cut?
Read the worked answer
Cut the holiday paragraph and the colloquial padding; never cut the refund/August choice or the 10-day deadline.
Priority order for cuts:
- The holiday plans - irrelevant content. It does not earn marks and it distracts from the request; it also eats ~35 words.
- Redundancy - «scusa il disturbo», double apologies, repeated dates.
- Abbreviations that damage register (cmq, x) - these are three-second fixes.
Never cut, because the rubric names them explicitly:
- the problem stated clearly (course cancelled, ref. 4471, 4–15 July);
- the request with a concrete alternative (refund or August group);
- the deadline (10 days).
A rough budget for 130 words: greeting and opening 15, problem 35, request with alternative 35, deadline 20, closing 15. Missing a required content point costs more than being 40 words over - but an unfocused 195-word email with irrelevant content loses on both coherence and range. Fix content first, then length.
2. Rewrite the register with minimal, high-yield edits. What should Davide avoid over-correcting?
Read the worked answer
Target: consistent neutral-formal, addressed to the school as «Voi».
High-yield substitutions:
- «Ciao, scusa il disturbo» → Gentile Segreteria, or Gentili Signori,
- «ti scrivo» → Vi scrivo (he is writing to an office, not one person; Le scrivo only if he knows a named individual)
- «cmq» → comunque; «x» → per
- «voglio» → vorrei / chiedo cortesemente
- closing → Ringraziando per l'attenzione, cordiali saluti + name and reference number
What to avoid: over-formalising into archaic formulas (Voglia gradire, Egregio Egregiamente) and stacking subjunctives. At B2 the reward is consistency and control, not pomposity. Mixing one archaic phrase into otherwise plain prose reads as memorised chunks and often breaks cohesion.
Also: keep the passive and impersonal forms you already have (il corso è stato cancellato) - they are appropriate here and show range.
3. After the cuts the email is about 110 words. Is that a problem, and how does he add 20 words without padding?
Read the worked answer
Slightly under-range is tolerable; persistent under-length signals limited range - so add content that scores.
Do not add adjectives, exclamation marks or repetition. Add material that demonstrates a B2 resource:
- A motive sentence: «Ho bisogno della certificazione entro settembre per motivi di lavoro» - plausible, relevant, and it justifies the deadline.
- The alternative spelled out with dates: «in alternativa, chiedo di essere inserito nel gruppo di agosto, dal 5 al 23».
- One polite hypothesis: «Qualora il rimborso non fosse possibile, sarei grato se poteste confermarmi una sistemazione in agosto.» - a conditional plus a congiuntivo, i.e. exactly what the descriptors reward.
That is roughly 30 words of real content, bringing him to ~140.
Rule: word count is a symptom, not a target. If you are short, you are probably missing a rhetorical move (motive, alternative, politeness), not vocabulary.