Letters

1
Letters

• Understanding the different purposes and styles
  of letter found in newspapers and magazines
• T12, T17 Summer Term

2
Do these letters inform, protest, complain or
persuade?

• Dear Sir,
• We recently read about plans to
  close the local cinema in the village.
• We are very angry about this as a
  promise was made only two months ago to keep the
  cinema open.
• We have an increasingly elderly
  population in the village who cannot afford to
  use their cars (if indeed they own one) to drive
  to the nearest town and public transport has
  become so unreliable in recent years.
• In addition, I should also like to
  point out, the youngsters in the village love the
  Saturday morning shows and regularly meet up with
  their friends at the cinema café.
• This decision really must be discussed
  with the whole village. Im sure you will find, I
  am not alone in my views, indeed a petition with
  three hundred signatures has been sent with this
  letter.
• Shame on you.
• Your faithfully,
• E Major
• 
  Mrs. E. Major

• Dear Residents,
• I am writing to inform you
  that the unfenced stream running alongside your
  properties has now been fenced in.
• This was brought about because of the
  incident six weeks ago when a parent walking her
  children home from school slipped on the path and
  fell into the stream. Carried by the swollen
  waters, she managed to crawl to safely after
  grabbing a overhanging tree. Badly shaken by the
  experience, her husband informed us of this
  danger, which indeed could have been potentially
  fatal.
• We were alerted to this and used our
  emergency funds to sort out this problem.
• I hope that this remedy is to your
  satisfaction.
• Yours sincerely,
• M. Richards
• M.K. Richards
  (Chairman of the Local Council)

3
What about these letters?

• Dear Headteacher.
• I am writing to complain
  about the behaviour of some of your pupils when
  boarding the local bus.
• For three days in a row I have need to
  catch the 97 bus from outside Somerfield
  Supermarket, near to your school.
• Every single day I have been pushed to
  one side as a certain group of children from your
  school boarded the bus. I admit I am rather slow
  but I am elderly and need to walk with the
  assistance of a stick.
• I asked the driver to speak to them but
  he said it was nothing to do with him and added
  he has a family and to quote, kids nowadays
  might carry knives and thus he was reluctant to
  put them off the bus. He suggested I write a
  letter of complaint to you.
• I am very annoyed about this when I
  was young we always showed respect to our elders,
  but it seems that this is no longer the case!
• From a very angry O.A.P.
• Your sincerely,
• J. B. Williams
• 
  Mr. J.B. Williams

• Dear Parent,
• I am writing to tell you
  about our new strawberry toothpaste, which has
  just been launched in your area.
• As a discerning parent who genuinely
  cares about the health of your childrens teeth,
  you will be interested to know that this product
  took three years to research and has been proven
  to prevent tooth decay more effectively than any
  other product on the market.
• Children love the taste and choose this
  flavour more than any other on the market as the
  results of our extensive market research
  suggests.
• What is good taste makes good sense!
• At the bottom of the letter you will
  find a free voucher for three tubes of our new
  product. At no cost to you, this product can be
  tried out we hope you will agree that this is
  without doubt the most effective toothpaste ever
  created.
• We hope you like the product and we mean
  this most sincerely!
• P.C.
  Masters
• 
  
  (Managing Director)

4
Features of a Letter of Complaint

• Opening sentence states what the complaint is
  about
• Following sentences give further reasons to back
  up the complaint
• Angry, emotional tone and phrases, including the
  letter ending. (Alternatively the tone might be
  formal but assertive)

5
Imagine we have returned from a disastrous school
trip to Raby Castle, how would be set out a
letter of complaint?

• Dear Custodian,
• A group of Year
  Five pupils and I recently visited your castle on
  the 20th June, as part of our history project and
  we were very disappointed by the poor service
  throughout the day.
• We expected the guide, Mr. Sweeny, we
  have always used but he had been placed with a
  different school.
• The guide we had spoke so softly we
  could not hear him, and when some of my highly
  motivated class asked him their questions
  (prepared prior to the visit), he said he had no
  time to answer them! This was quite irregular and
  extremely unsatisfactory as the guides job is to
  inform the visitors and assist them in any way
  possible.
• Many of the captions on the walls were
  written in such small print we had great
  difficulty in reading them. Some were missing
  completely.
• This is not at all what we had expected,
  and I am expecting a full and immediate response
  to my letter, with a full refund for every pupil
  in the group.
• What an utter waste of a day! My pupils
  who had spend many long hours working hard on
  their history topic in preparation for the visit
  are finding they have to spend even more time
  researching using books and the Internet to
  locate the information they should have access to
  at the castle in order to complete their
  projects. Surely you can imagine my
  disappointment?
• 
  Yours faithfully,
• 
  Mrs. J. Armstrong.

6
Your task

• What could we complain about?
• 1.
• 2.
• 3.
• 4.
• 5.

• Using your Features Card, draft a letter of
  complaint to the manager of Wet and Wild in
  Prudhoe
• We have been on a class trip to the swimming pool
  and have many reasons to complain.

7
This is the list of the 20 most frequently
misspelt words in the Year 6 SATS over the last
few years. Your assignment is to learn them
during the half term holiday.

• change
• advertise
• injured
• serious
• surprise
• nastiest
• designed
• regardless
• attempts
• individual

• 11. technique
• 12. swimming
• 13. ready
• 14. vanishing
• 15. known
• 16. stripes
• 17. perfectly
• 18. future
• 19. produce
• 20. themselves