Formal complaint email: register drift and anglicised vocabulary
Rohit has 20 minutes of the Writing section to produce a formal email of 100–120 words. The task: he stayed four nights (2–5 August) at the Hotel Miramar in Nerja, room 312, and paid 340 €. He must complain about three things and ask for a partial refund of 60 €.
His notes read: 'aire acondicionado roto las dos primeras noches'; 'ruido de la cocina hasta la 1.00'; 'el desayuno se acabó a las 9.30 aunque el folleto dice hasta las 10.30'; 'Marta, recepción, dijo: «tranquilo, mañana lo arreglamos» y no lo arreglaron'.
His draft opens «¡Hola, Marta! ¿Qué tal? Te escribo porque…» and includes reservación, chequear el aire and retornar el dinero. The rubric gives 4 marks for register and conventions, 4 for content points and 2 for the word limit. His draft currently runs to 145 words.
1. Rewrite the salutation, the pronoun system and the closing so the email earns the register marks.
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Marta is named, but the relationship is commercial, so usted governs the whole text. Opening: «Estimada Marta:» or, if unsure of the name, «Estimados señores:». Verbs: le escribo, le solicito, le agradecería. Possessives: su hotel, su respuesta. «¡Hola! ¿Qué tal?» is for a friend and costs register marks here.
Closing: «En espera de su respuesta, le saluda atentamente, Rohit Sharma» - le saluda is third person, matching usted.
The dangerous error is mixing: a single te escribo inside an otherwise formal letter is easy to miss because it is in the first line, and markers check the first line. Add a subject line too - «Asunto: reclamación, habitación 312, 2–5 de agosto» - since a formal email without one reads as a note rather than a complaint.
2. Replace *reservación*, *chequear el aire* and *retornar el dinero* with natural Peninsular Spanish, and name the type of error in each.
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reservación → reserva. The -ción form is American usage; a Spanish hotel's own material says reserva, and the rubric rewards the variety the exam teaches.
chequear el aire → revisar / comprobar el aire acondicionado. Chequear is a calque of 'to check' and is out of place in a formal complaint; el aire alone is vague, so the noun must be completed.
retornar el dinero → devolver el dinero / el reembolso. Retornar is intransitive (a person returns); using it with a direct object is an English calque of 'return the money'.
Pattern to state in the answer: lexical precision is what these marks test, so a wrong collocation costs more than a small grammar slip in the same sentence.
3. The draft is 145 words. What do you cut, and what must survive at all costs?
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Survive: the three complaints each with one concrete detail (2–4 August for the air conditioning, 1.00 for the kitchen noise, 9.30 against the advertised 10.30), the request for 60 €, and the request for a written reply. Those are the rubric's content points and they are not negotiable.
Cut: the receptionist's promise told as a story, any holiday background, and apologies for complaining.
Compression technique: fold the quote into the complaint - «a pesar de que en recepción se me aseguró que se arreglaría» - instead of giving it its own sentence. One sentence per complaint with además / por otra parte as connectors, not new paragraphs. Count words before writing the refund sentence so the remaining budget is known. Adding a fourth complaint to look thorough is the usual reason candidates overshoot and lose the word-limit marks.