Write an e-mail to the Principal of a neighbouring school requesting him/her to send a team of children to participate in the interactive session which will follow the play.

MODEL ANSWER

To: principaldps@gmail.com Subject: Request to send a team for the interactive session on World Water Day

Respected Sir,

I am writing on behalf of the Dramatics Club of St. Xavier’s High School, Kolkata, to request that you send a team of students from your school to take part in the interactive session following our one-act play on World Water Day.

The play will be staged in our Auditorium on Tuesday, 22 March 2022, from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon, and the interactive session will run for about forty minutes afterwards. It will take the form of an open discussion between the audience and the cast on water conservation in homes and schools, and we should like students from more than one school to take part so that the exchange is genuinely wide.

A team of eight to ten students from Classes VIII to X would be ideal, accompanied by a teacher. There is no participation fee, and we shall arrange refreshments.

If you agree, we should be grateful for the names by Friday, 18 March 2022.

We look forward to welcoming your students. I look forward to your reply.

Thanking you,

Yours sincerely, Ananya Sen Secretary, Dramatics Club St. Xavier’s High School, Kolkata

WHAT THIS QUESTION SPECIFICALLY REQUIRES

Read the request precisely: you are asking for a TEAM OF CHILDREN to take part in the INTERACTIVE SESSION — not to watch the play, and not to perform in it. An e-mail that merely invites the school to attend has answered a different question.

The DETAILS MUST MATCH the notice in part (i) — same date, same time, same venue, same event. Examiners read the two together.

Content checklist: the event and its date, time and venue; what the interactive session actually is; how many students and of which classes; the practical arrangements; and how to respond.

Saying WHY you want another school involved — so that the discussion is wider than one school’s own students — gives the Principal a reason to agree, which is what makes a request letter persuasive rather than merely polite. FORMAT AND MARKS DIVISION: see the Notice and E-mail 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.