FCE - Informal Letters Practice

First Certificate examination: writing (paper 2)

See list of exercises on informal letters...

Remember that the letter or email should be informal. That means you should use informal expressions that are usually made up of Anglo Saxon words and not Latin-based words, for example:

I should like to express my gratitude for your affectionate letter. (formal)
Thanks so much for your kind letter. (informal)

In informal letters, use contractions consistently, e.g. don’t say: I’ll go... and in the next sentence: I would like... .

Keep your sentences short. Consider this sentence written by an FCE student:

"It has been nice to hear from you because thanks to your email, I have found out a lot of things about you; I will try to answer all your questions so you can get to know me a little better."

The sentence above is too long. English prefers shorter sentences. Not only that, in longer sentences, you are more likely to make mistakes in grammar and punctuation. Remember, one sentence for each idea. The above sentence would be better expressed in three separate sentences:

"It has been nice to hear from you. Thanks to your email, I have found out a lot of things about you. I will try to answer all your questions so you can get to know me a little better."

Another thing to remember about writing for the First Certificate exam in general is that your own writing may be difficult to understand for a British examiner. People from different countries tend to have different ways of writing the letters (a,b,c, etc.) even though the alphabet is more or less the same. For example, Spanish students shouldn't use Spanish-style letters and numbers, e.g. z or 7. But also remember to make your letters look as much as possible like typescript i.e. like the letters on this page. It would be a shame to lose marks in the FCE exam because the examiner cannot read you handwriting!

You can now do the following six exercises on informal letters for First Certificate. They contain typical errors made by students of English. Read the letters/emails and correct the mistakes.

Go to exercise one on correcting errors in informal letters...

See list of exercises on informal letters...

Enjoy and good luck with the exam!