You have changed your school recently. Write a letter to your friend of your old school telling him / her what you like about your new school but also what you miss about your old school.

MODEL ANSWER

Flat 67, A.D.A. Colony Stanly Road Allahabad 211001

2 March 2020

Dear Sumit,

It is almost a month since I joined the new school, and I have not written before now only because the first three weeks were chaos. I have a desk and a routine at last, so here is the full report you demanded.

There is a good deal to like. The campus is enormous — the science block alone is bigger than our whole old building — and every classroom has a projector that actually works. My English teacher is from Manchester and reads Shakespeare aloud in a way that made half the class sit up. There is a debating society that meets twice a week and I have been put in the junior team for next month, which I am equally excited and terrified about. And there are students here from China, Japan and Afghanistan, so lunch has become an education in itself.

What I miss is harder to write about.

I miss the old building, which was shabby and had a leaking corridor and which I was fond of for exactly those reasons. I miss Sir Mathew, who taught Physics badly and told stories brilliantly. But mostly, of course, I miss all of you — the lunch break under the stairs, the arguments about cricket that never ended, and the fact that I never once had to think about whom to sit with. Here the teachers are excellent and rather strict, and I have not yet made a friend I could be silent with.

How is Aniket? He was seriously ill when I left and nobody has told me anything since. Do write and tell me.

My regards to Aunty and Uncle. Reply when you get time — and make it a long one.

Your loving friend, Srijan

WHAT THIS QUESTION SPECIFICALLY REQUIRES

TWO tasks, and the word ALSO in the question makes both compulsory:

1. what you LIKE about the new school
2. what you MISS about the old one

Give each its own section. A letter that enthuses about the new school for 200 words and adds "I miss you all" at the end earns perhaps half the content marks.

FORMAT: an INFORMAL letter — no receiver’s address, no subject line, and the close is "Your loving friend" or "Yours affectionately", never "Yours faithfully".

SPECIFICITY earns the expression marks. "The new school is very good" is worth little; a projector that works, a teacher from Manchester, a leaking corridor and Sir Mathew are worth a great deal. Notice also that what is missed is not only people but small, particular things — that is how real letters sound. FORMAT AND MARKS DIVISION: see the Formal Letter and Informal Letter references in the Writing Formats & Marking (Reference) chapter.

USE THIS AS A MODEL, NOT AS AN ANSWER TO MEMORISE. The question asks for an ORIGINAL composition, and every year examiners identify scripts reproduced from guide books; a memorised answer can be penalised for plagiarism and will in any case read as borrowed. Study this piece for its STRUCTURE — how it opens, how the paragraphs are ordered, where the required tasks are answered, how it ends — and then write your own, about your own school, your own family, your own town. Your own specific detail is worth more marks than anyone else’s polished sentence.