Writing Skills: Letters, Reports, and Paragraphs
What the domain tests
Writing Skills: Letters, Reports, and Paragraphs tests format, register and organised content. You may write a formal letter of complaint, enquiry or application, an informal letter, a report for a school magazine or newspaper, or a unified paragraph on a given topic.
Core rules
- Formal letter: sender's address, date, receiver's address, salutation, subject line, body in paragraphs, closing. Use 'Yours faithfully' when the name is unknown and 'Yours sincerely' when it is known.
- Informal letter: warm salutation, chatty but clear paragraphs, personal closing.
- Report: headline, byline, date and place, past tense, third person, factual and objective tone.
- Paragraph: one controlling idea, a topic sentence, supporting details and a closing sentence.
- Keep to the word limit; extra length rarely earns extra marks.
Worked example
Task: report on an inter-school debate. Opening: 'Inter-School Debate Held at Government High School' Reasoning: a headline names the event; the opening sentence gives what, where and when in past tense. 'The debate was held on 12 August in the school auditorium. Eight teams argued the motion on digital learning.' The passive 'was held' keeps the report impersonal; no 'I' appears.
Traps that cost marks
Omitting the subject line in a formal letter; mixing 'Yours faithfully' with a named receiver; writing a report in future tense; using first person in a newspaper report; packing unrelated ideas into one paragraph; forgetting the date and place line.