Priya: a formal email that says everything except what she wants
Priya is preparing for B1 writing. The task: write an email of 100–120 words to Mr Hall, the manager of her building, describing a broken lift and saying what she wants him to do. Use an appropriate tone.
Her draft is 178 words. It begins 'Dear Sir or Madam' and ends 'Yours faithfully'. The second paragraph reads: 'I am writing to express my profound dissatisfaction with the aforementioned apparatus, which has been non-functional for a fortnight.' She never states what she wants Mr Hall to do. She spends about 40 words explaining how long she has lived in the building and how quiet it normally is. Later she writes 'can't' and 'ASAP', and closes with 'I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience' - a sentence copied from a model answer she found online.
Of her 25 minutes she spent 12 planning in detail, 10 writing and 3 copying the draft out neatly with one small correction. She has not counted the words. She believes the email is strong because 'the vocabulary is very formal'.
1. Rank Priya's problems by their impact on her writing score, and justify the order.
Read the worked answer
- Missing content point. The task asks for two things; she delivers one. A script that does not cover the task cannot score well on task achievement, and grammar cannot recover it. Highest value, cheapest fix.
- Register mismatch. 'Dear Sir or Madam / Yours faithfully' is for a reader whose name you do not know; Mr Hall has a name, so 'Dear Mr Hall' with 'Yours sincerely' or 'Best regards' is the conventional pairing. Mixing 'aforementioned apparatus' with 'can't' and 'ASAP' is inconsistency, which reads as control problems rather than friendliness.
- Length. 178 words against 100–120 costs planning and checking time and invites irrelevant content - the 40 words on how long she has lived there earn nothing. Controlled over-length is not fatal, but it is a symptom.
- The copied closing line and 'profound dissatisfaction'. Material that does not serve the task earns no credit, and the closing is generic. Grammar is not currently her limiting factor.
2. What should she do about the memorised sentence and the over-length, and what should she keep?
Read the worked answer
The memorised sentence: she should be able to perform the same function three ways in her own words - 'I would be grateful if you could let me know what happens next', 'Please tell me when the lift will be fixed', 'Could you confirm what you are doing about it?' A chunk is worth carrying only if it is flexible; a fixed sentence that does not fit the reader reads as copied. The 'profound dissatisfaction' phrase fails for a different reason: it is not wrong English, it is wrong for a building manager who needs a date.
Over-length: cut the paragraph about how long she has lived there. Replace it with the missing request - 'Please arrange for an engineer to look at the lift this week and let me know the date.' One sentence fixes the content gap and about 25 words of the length problem.
Keep: correct basic punctuation, clear paragraphing and the willingness to use formal vocabulary. Channel it into short, plain, specific sentences.
3. Give her a 25-minute plan for the exam.
Read the worked answer
3 minutes - read the task twice; underline the reader, the content points and any instruction about tone. Number the points; she will tick them off later.
4 minutes - notes, not sentences: one line per point, plus exactly what she wants the reader to do. Decide the opening and closing forms now ('Dear Mr Hall' / 'Best regards'), because that is where register slips.
12 minutes - write. Plain sentences, covering every point in the order the task gives them. If a sentence starts getting long, break it.
4 minutes - check against the ticks: all points covered? word count inside the range? same register throughout? verb endings and plurals?
2 minutes - fix the two or three worst errors only. Rewriting whole sentences at this stage usually creates new ones.
The 12-minute planning block was the real problem: planning beyond notes is drafting, and it left no time to check content.