A Composition A Week - Situational Writing (Formal Letter)

In Semester 1 Week 8, instead of Continuous Writing, the Advanced Composition pupils did a piece of Situational Writing instead. They were asked to write a formal letter.

For the uninitiated, the writing component in the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) has two components: Continuous Writing (a narrative consisting of 40 marks) and Situational Writing.


Situational Writing consists of 15 marks and pupils would be asked to write one of the following:

• email
• letter
• report
• postcard
• notice
• note

A quick browse of the PSLE booklets reveals that overwhelmingly, pupils are asked to write an email or letter. Pupils have been asked to write a postcard only once since the new (okay, not so new now) format of the PSLE English examination was introduced in the early 2000s. Likewise for the report, if I'm not mistaken. And it makes sense because the email and letter are documents that are used to a great degree in our daily lives. So we should make sure that our children are conversant with them.

Thus for this post, I would like to cover the proper format required for the formal letter in the PSLE English examination.

The proper format for a formal letter is:

Sender's name:

Sender's title (if appropriate)

Sender's organisation (if appropriate)

Sender's address

(Leave a line)

Date

(Leave a line)

Recipient's name

Recipient's address

(Leave a line)

Dear ____________

(Leave a line)

Subject Line

(Leave a line)

abcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcbcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabc

abcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcbcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabc

abcabcabcabcabc.

(Leave a line)

abcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcbcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabc

abcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcbcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabc

abcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcbcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabcabc

abcabcabcabcabc.

(Leave a line)

Yours sincerely,

Sender's full name

The format above is the format to be followed if we are writing a formal letter to someone whom we are not very well-acquainted with. But in the PSLE, the stuff in blue will not be tested.

Yes, that means that the pupils only have to worry from the line starting with 'Dear ____________'. I guess the rationale is that we are not really expecting children to write letters to complain to restaurant managers. We only want to expose them to a common but vital document that would touch their lives in the very near future.

So the good news is that pupils don't have to be stressed out trying to remember if they should put down the sender's particulars before the recipient's or vice versa. However, they do have to take note of the following points:

1. They must give six content points to score the full content mark (which is six) and increasing, the six points are no longer straightforward points which pupils can lift from the information given. A quick flip of the PSLE booklets will show that pupils have to fully understand the content that is given and be able to infer to get all six points.
2. A subject line is not mandatory. Some schools ask their pupils to give one while others do away with it completely. In the PSLE, either option is fine so the advice to the individual pupil would be to follow your school's guideline. Why? Because although you won't be penalised in the PSLE either way, you would if you don't follow your school's expectations in the school examinations.
3. Unless a letter is extremely short, we usually expect it to be paragraphed. However, again in the PSLE, they don't care. So with regards to paragraphing, it's the same as the subject line. Follow the school's standard.
4. Do pupils leave two fingers' spacing for paragraphing? The answer is 'NO'. All writing is to be flushed to the left, so do not leave two fingers' spacing anywhere in the letter.
5. The complimentary close should be 'Yours sincerely' with an upper-case 'Y' and a lower-case 's'. 'Yours' has an 's' at the end of the word. There are of course other versions but as pupils seem to have many problems with the complimentary close, I think it is better to ask them to focus all their attention on one and remember it perfectly.
6. Formal letters must conclude with the full name of the sender.

As I've mentioned earlier, for Situational Writing, there are six content marks. Nine marks are apportioned to language. Gone are the days when pupils will automatically score full content mark as long as they make no grammatical errors. These days, apart from searching for grammatical errors (or lack thereof), examiners also look out for the tone of the letter. What this means is that for formal letters, a formal tone is required and for informal letters, an informal one is needed. The difference between formal and informal tones would be covered in another post. But what I want to highlight is that it is difficult to score full language marks because not only do the pupils have to hand in an error-free document, but their tone also has to be appropriate. And not surprisingly, pupils have more problems with the formal tone than the informal one.

Yes, the standards which we expect for an A* in the PSLE are pretty high. Which is why many parents and pupils (and even some teachers) have been complaining that the PSLE is becoming more and more difficult -some would even say unrealistically difficult - but for pupils who are in the system, they don't have a choice. They can choose to sit and whine or they could use the time more constructively by looking for ways to improve their work and to overcome the challenges of the system.