Letters

1. Letters Understanding the different purposes and styles of letter found in newspapers and magazines T12, T17 – Summer Term

2. 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) 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. I’m 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 Do these letters inform, protest, complain or persuade?

3. 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 children’s 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) What about these letters?

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. 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. What could we complain about? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Your task:

7. 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 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.