Writing Skills - Letters, Notices, Reports, Dialogues, Speeches, and Other Formats
Writing skills test format, audience, purpose, and tone across letters, notices, reports, dialogues, and speeches. Marks are lost quickly when the format is missing or the register is wrong.
Core rules
- Formal letter: sender address, date, receiver, subject, salutation, body, closing.
- Notice: heading NOTICE, date, title, 5W body, signature.
- Report: headline, byline, past tense, factual sequence.
- Dialogue: natural turns, short replies, no long monologue.
- Speech: greeting, thesis, examples, call to action.
Worked example
Task: draft a notice for a lost library book. Reasoning: include what was lost (a library book), where (library), when (yesterday), identifying detail (title or colour), and contact (class teacher). Use the NOTICE heading, date, title, short body and signature. Do not turn it into a letter. Keep within the word limit.
Traps
- Missing heading, date, subject or signature.
- Mixing formal and informal address in one piece.
- Inventing unnecessary details that distract from the task.
- Writing a dialogue as two long speeches.
- Ignoring the audience and word limit.