Writing skills: letter, essay, translation and summarising
Writing skills: letter, essay, translation and summarising
This domain is the productive part of the paper: an informal or official letter, a short essay, translation of sentences, and either a summary or a dialogue-type task depending on the set. Marks are lost mainly to format and register rather than to vocabulary, so learn the shapes below as reusable templates.
Letter
- Informal: place, date, પ્રિય મિત્ર..., two or three body paragraphs on the given points, closing ભવનો or આપનો વિશ્વાસુ, then your name.
- Official: sender's address, date, addressee with designation, a one-line વિષય, salutation માનનીય સાહેબ, a formal body, આપનો વિશ્વાસુ, signature. Use polite formulae such as આથી નમ્ર વિનંતી છે કે...
Essay (નિબંધ)
Three to five paragraphs: definition or importance, two or three developed points each with an example, then a conclusion that closes the argument without introducing a new idea. One idea per paragraph, and keep within the word limit.
Translation
Work sentence by sentence and preserve tense, number and gender. Idioms are not literal: આંખમાં ધૂળ નાખવી means to deceive, not to throw dust in the eyes.
Worked example
Translate તે રોજ સવારે ચાલવા જાય છે. The words રોજ and સવારે signal a habitual action, so English present simple is right, and જાય છે is third person singular: He goes for a walk every morning. A word-by-word rendering such as he daily morning walking goes is the error the examiner is testing for.
Summarising
Reduce to about one-third of the original, keep the main idea and key facts in the same order, write in the third person, and add no examples or opinions of your own.
Traps that cost marks
- Omitting the વિષય line, or using an informal closing in an official letter.
- Writing an essay with no conclusion, or with a conclusion that raises a fresh topic.
- Translating idioms word for word and losing the tense of the original.