Writing Skills: Essay, Report, Letter and Précis
The four tasks
Each format has a fixed skeleton, and format itself earns marks. An essay needs a clear introduction, two or three body paragraphs and a conclusion that does not repeat the introduction word for word. A report needs a title, and an opening that states what, where and when, followed by factual detail in the past tense and third person, without personal opinion. A formal letter needs sender's address, date, receiver's designation and address, subject line, salutation, body and subscription; an informal letter drops the subject and uses a conversational tone. A précis condenses a passage to about one-third of its length, in your own words, in the third person and normally the past tense.
Rules that carry marks
- Keep one idea per paragraph and connect paragraphs with linkers such as 'however', 'therefore', 'in addition'.
- In a report, avoid 'I think'; attribute opinions to sources instead.
- In a précis, delete examples, repetitions, figures of speech and direct speech.
- Respect the word limit; both over-writing and under-writing lose marks.
Worked example
Task: write a précis of a 120-word passage about a school recycling drive. Reasoning: identify the single main idea (the drive reduced waste and changed habits), then drop the list of items collected and the quoted teacher's remark. Answer: "A school recycling drive cut waste significantly and changed students' everyday habits." That is roughly one-third of the original and keeps the argument, not the decorations.
Traps that cost marks
- Missing parts of the letter layout.
- Writing a report in the first person.
- Copying sentences verbatim into a précis.
- Ignoring the word limit.
- Adding unsupported opinion to a factual report.