Informal Letter Writing 1: Opening Paragraph

For Cambridge exams (especially PET) students need to be able to reply to an informal letter or email. They need to use structures to begin and end their letters effectively and to refer back and respond to the message in the exam question (see image below). This post has activities for starting the letter and at the bottom of the page you'll see a link for my post on referring back to points made in the exam task.

The phrases in colour are things that students can learn and incorporate into most informal letters, particularly for the PET exam.

Starting the letter

I think it's really important that students refer back to the letter they have received (whether in real life, or in an exam) so I give my students a phrase like:

Thanks for your letter, I'm so glad that ..(thing that they said in the letter). What wonderful news!

If it's a B2 class or higher, I might add some extra layers and use something like:

Thanks for your letter. It's wonderful to hear from you, and I'm so glad that ..... I'm not much of an expert on ............. to be honest but I'll do my best to help.

Next, I give them a series of situations to respond to orally, with Dear name and the opening phrase:

• Chris is doing a project on prerodactyls

• Marta has joined a religeous cult

• Bill is going to be the next president of Space,

• Lucia is going to space

Obviously, it adds to their engagement if you use student names for this.

Here is a PowerPoint that I use with lots of silly situations:

Informal Letter - Respond to situation HighImpactEnglish.pptx

or (in case you have problems accessing it) as a PDF

Informal Letter - Respond to situation

.pdf

Download PDF • 885KB

At the end of the activity. Ask students to swap notebooks and write the opening of a letter to their partner responding to some good news:

Dear Ling,

Thanks for your letter. I'm so glad that you have just won the lottery, what absolutely wonderful news!

Then swap again and write another opening paragraph addressed to the notebook owner. This time responding to bad news:

Dear Natacha,

Thanks for your letter. I'm so sorry that you have lost your pencil, what absolutely terrible news!

Students have now practised starting their letters by speaking and writing and everyone has a record of the structures in their notebook - stage one complete!