A certain book / chapter has been included in your syllabus. You have heard that a film version is now available. Write a letter to the Manager of a film theatre near your school, requesting that the film be shown. Tell him / her why it will be beneficial to the students.

MODEL ANSWER

5, York House Peddar Road Mumbai 400026

18 February 2023

The Manager Regal Cinema Colaba Causeway Mumbai 400005

Subject: Request for a special screening of the film version of a prescribed text

Sir,

I am writing on behalf of the students of Classes IX and X of St. Xavier’s High School, Mumbai, to request a special morning screening of the film version of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, which has been prescribed for us this year.

We should be grateful if a show could be arranged on any weekday morning in March, at a time convenient to you. About one hundred and twenty students, accompanied by four teachers, would attend, and the school is willing to pay the usual group rate.

May I explain why this would benefit us. The novel is set on an island and turns on the behaviour of a group of boys cut off from adults — a situation most of us find difficult to picture from the text alone. Seeing it performed would make the setting, the sequence of events and above all the changing relations between the characters far clearer, and would help us in the discussion and essay work that follow. Our teachers have also planned a written exercise comparing the film with the novel, which would be impossible without a screening.

A morning show would also fill seats at a time when the theatre is ordinarily empty, so we hope the arrangement would suit you as well.

I shall be grateful for your consideration and am happy to meet you at any convenient time.

Thanking you,

Yours faithfully, Jaydeep Rao (Head Boy, St. Xavier’s High School, Mumbai)

WHAT THIS QUESTION SPECIFICALLY REQUIRES

TWO tasks:

1. REQUEST that the film be shown — with the practical details a manager would need: which film, when, how many students, who pays
2. explain WHY IT WILL BENEFIT THE STUDENTS

The second is compulsory and is where content marks are lost. Note that it says benefit the STUDENTS, so the argument must be educational, not that everyone would enjoy it.

NAME THE BOOK. The question says "a certain book / chapter", which means you must choose one and be specific. A letter about "our prescribed text" without naming it reads as evasive and gives you nothing concrete to argue from.

The closing point about filling empty morning seats is worth copying as a technique: giving the reader a reason of his own to agree makes any request letter stronger. 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.