Grant Email Corrections
Your class is applying for a N$5,000 science club grant. The teacher asks you to check a draft email before it is sent to the regional sponsor. The draft reads: 'Dear Sir/Madam, I am writing to request for a grant of N$5,000 for our science club. Our club have 28 members and we meet every Wednesday. Last term, we build a solar cooker and it worked good. The money will be use to buy two microscopes, chemicals and to pay for transport to the regional science fair. We would be grateful if you could consider our application. Please reply before 30 May. Yours faithfully, K. Amutenya.' The teacher says the email must be formal, grammatically correct and clear, but must not change the amount or the date. You have ten minutes to mark the corrections.
1. Identify three grammatical errors in the draft and give corrected versions. Explain the rule briefly.
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Reasoning: each correction must be justified by the grammar of the sentence, not just by what 'sounds right'.
Three errors and corrections:
- 'request for a grant' → 'request a grant'. 'Request' is transitive here, so it takes a direct object without 'for'.
- 'Our club have 28 members' → 'Our club has 28 members'. The subject 'club' is singular in this context, so the verb must be 'has'.
- 'we build a solar cooker' → 'we built a solar cooker'. 'Last term' places the action in finished past time, so past simple 'built' is needed.
Two further errors worth marking: 'worked good' → 'worked well' (adverb, not adjective), and 'will be use' → 'will be used' (passive needs past participle).
2. The teacher says the email must be formal. Which two changes would improve formality without changing the facts? Explain why.
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Reasoning: formality is about word choice and politeness, not about making the email longer or changing facts. The amount N$5,000 and the date 30 May must stay.
Two changes:
- 'Please reply before 30 May' → 'We would appreciate a reply by 30 May.' This turns a bare command into a polite request and is more appropriate to a sponsor.
- 'it worked good' → 'it performed well.' This replaces informal, grammatically incorrect wording with formal vocabulary while keeping the fact that the cooker functioned successfully.
Do not change 'Dear Sir/Madam' or 'Yours faithfully': with no named recipient, that pairing is already correct and formal.
3. One punctuation issue: 'two microscopes, chemicals and to pay for transport' is not parallel. Rewrite the list so it is grammatically parallel and punctuated correctly.
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Reasoning: the original list mixes a noun phrase ('two microscopes, chemicals') with an infinitive phrase ('to pay for transport'), so the items are not parallel.
Corrected sentence: The money will be used to buy two microscopes and chemicals, and to pay for transport to the regional science fair.
Why: 'to buy ...' and 'to pay ...' are now two parallel infinitive phrases. The comma before 'and to pay' makes the second phrase clear and prevents 'and' from being read as joining only 'chemicals' and 'to pay'.