Formal Complaint Letter: Register and Ambiguity
The senior class at Gbarnga Community School has drafted a letter to the principal about the broken hand pump that has left 420 students without drinking water for nine school days. The draft begins: 'Hey Principal, we want to say that the pump situation is really bad and students are suffering, so we hope you will do something fast.' Later the draft says: 'After waiting for two hours, the water finally came, which was frustrating for everyone.' It ends: 'The students who fetch water from the nearby town every morning should be given permission to continue, but they must not be late for first period.' The class secretary argues the letter is 'clear enough' because the principal knows the situation. The teacher asks the group to decide which sentences need revision for a formal school audience and why.
1. Identify the two sentences most in need of revision for a formal letter and rewrite each. Explain what each revision changes.
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The opening and the 'After waiting...' sentence cause the most damage. Opening: 'The hand pump serving 420 students has been out of service for nine school days, and students have had no drinking water on site.' This removes 'Hey,' 'want to say,' and 'really bad,' replacing a vague complaint with verifiable facts and a formal register. The second: 'Students waited two hours before water arrived, a delay that frustrated everyone.' The original attaches 'waiting' to 'the water,' so it says the water waited; it also leaves 'which' pointing loosely at the whole event. Naming the students as the waiters and the delay as the frustration removes the dangling modifier and the vague relative pronoun. Formal letters to a principal should sound respectful but still specific; the revisions keep the complaint but make it harder to dismiss.
2. The final sentence contains an ambiguity about 'they.' Explain the two possible readings and rewrite the sentence so that only the intended meaning remains. State one detail you would need from the class to decide the intended meaning.
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'They' can refer either to all students or only to the students who fetch water. Reading 1: all students must not be late for first period. Reading 2: only the water-fetching group must not be late. The difference matters because the sentence grants permission, then attaches a condition; if the condition applies to everyone, the permission is much broader than intended. Rewrite: 'Students who fetch water from town each morning may continue to do so, provided they return before first period.' To decide the intended meaning, the class needs to know whether the principal's permission is meant to cover only the pupils doing the fetching or the whole class. That is a fact about school routine, not a grammar rule.
3. The secretary proposes replacing 'we want to say that the pump is really bad' with 'the pump has been out of service for nine school days.' Explain why the revision is stronger for this audience, and give one situation in which the original direct phrasing would be preferable.
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The revision is stronger because it converts an opinion into a dated, checkable fact. A principal can verify nine days; 'really bad' invites a dispute about feelings. It also avoids the informal 'we want to say' and shifts attention from the writers' emotions to the service failure. In a formal complaint, that is an advantage: it makes the request for action seem reasonable rather than personal. The original phrasing would be preferable in a short message to a sympathetic friend, or in an urgent face-to-face appeal where immediacy and emotion matter more than a record. Register is a choice about purpose and audience, not a rule that formal is always better.