You wish to stage a play to create awareness about the importance of saving electricity. Write a letter to the Manager of a nearby shopping mall/supermarket requesting permission to use the space in front of the shopping mall/supermarket to stage the play. Give him/her details about your requirements and state why the play will be beneficial to the shoppers.

MODEL ANSWER

14, Lake View Road Kolkata 700029

20 February 2024

The Manager South City Mall 375, Prince Anwar Shah Road Kolkata 700068

Subject: Request for permission to stage a street play on saving electricity

Sir,

I am writing on behalf of the Eco Club of St. Xavier’s High School, Kolkata, to request permission to stage a short street play in the open space in front of your mall on Saturday, 16 March 2024, between 5:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m.

The play, which runs for twenty minutes and will be performed twice, is about the everyday waste of electricity in homes and shops, and the simple habits that reduce it.

Our requirements are modest:

1. An open area of roughly fifteen feet by fifteen feet near the entrance.
2. Access to a power point for two microphones and a small speaker.
3. Permission for twelve students and two teachers to be present from 4:30 p.m. for setting up.

We shall bring our own properties and shall clear the space completely by 6:30 p.m.

May I add why we believe this would benefit your shoppers. A mall audience is precisely the audience such a message needs — families making purchasing decisions about appliances and lighting. The play explains star ratings and standby consumption in plain language, and the savings it describes are immediate and domestic. We hope it would also reflect well on the mall as a venue that supports community awareness.

I shall be grateful for your permission and am happy to meet you or your staff beforehand at any convenient time.

Thanking you,

Yours faithfully, Ria Sen (Secretary, Eco Club, St. Xavier’s High School)

WHAT THIS QUESTION SPECIFICALLY REQUIRES

THREE tasks, and the content marks are counted against all three:

1. REQUEST PERMISSION to use the space
2. give DETAILS OF YOUR REQUIREMENTS — be concrete: space, power, timing, number of people
3. state WHY THE PLAY WILL BENEFIT THE SHOPPERS

The third is the one candidates forget. Note that it says SHOPPERS, not "society" — the argument must be about the people who come to that mall.

The requirements section is best NUMBERED. It makes the content visible to the examiner at a glance and it is how such a request would really be written.

REGISTER: you are asking a favour of a busy stranger, so be courteous, brief and specific. Offering to clear the space afterwards, and to meet beforehand, is the kind of practical detail that makes a request credible. 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.