Semi-formal Letter — To Someone You Know By Name

"Yours faithfully" after a named salutationTask Achievement capped at 6

The pairing rule runs both ways and candidates who learned "Dear Sir or Madam / Yours faithfully" often apply the sign-off everywhere. Once the recipient has a name, "faithfully" is wrong, and it is wrong in the two places the examiner looks first.

Fix: Name given → "Dear Mr/Ms Patel," … "Yours sincerely,". No exceptions.

Drifting into full formalityTask Achievement 6.5

"I am writing to draw your attention to a matter of considerable concern regarding the premises" addressed to a landlord you speak to every month reads as a solicitor's letter. The register is meant to acknowledge that you know this person, and pretending you do not is as much a mismatch as being over-familiar.

Fix: Keep the structures polite but let the sentences be human: "I am writing about the heating in the flat, which we discussed briefly last month."

Drifting into informalityTask Achievement 6.5 · Lexical Resource 6.5

The opposite failure and just as common. "Hi Mr Patel, hope you're good! The boiler's playing up again" mixes a semi-formal salutation with a friend's tone. Knowing someone professionally is not the same as being friends with them.

Fix: No "Hi", no "hope you're good", no slang and no exclamation marks. One or two contractions across the whole letter are fine; a letter built on them is not.

Bullets mentioned rather than developedTask Achievement capped at 6

Exactly as in a formal letter. Three one-sentence answers cover the bullets in the weakest sense, and the descriptors reward a fully developed response. Semi-formal scenarios make this worse, because the familiarity tempts candidates into vagueness they would never use with a stranger.

Fix: Two to three sentences per bullet, each with specific invented detail — dates, amounts, names, times.

Past simple where the situation is still going onGrammatical Range & Accuracy capped at 6.5

A semi-formal letter almost always describes something ongoing — a fault that keeps recurring, a course still being studied, a job still held — and that is present perfect territory: "the boiler HAS broken down three times since November". Writing it in the present simple or the past simple reports a different situation from the one the letter is about, and the "since"/"for" pair fails with it ("since three months").

Fix: If it started in the past and still matters now, use the present perfect. Then check the time word: SINCE takes a point in time, FOR takes a duration.

Assuming shared knowledge that was never establishedCoherence & Cohesion 6.5 · Task Achievement 6.5

"As you know, the problem started again" leaves the reader — and the examiner — without the facts. Referring to a shared history is a strength of this register, but only when the specifics are still supplied.

Fix: Reference the relationship AND give the detail: "As we discussed in January, the boiler has now failed for the third time, most recently on 14 March."

Requests made as statementsTask Achievement 6.5

Because the relationship is familiar, candidates write "I need you to fix it this week" — which is a demand dressed as information. Semi-formal keeps the politeness structures even though the distance is smaller.

Fix: Use the modal request forms: "Would it be possible to…", "I would be grateful if you could…", "Could you let me know whether…".

How do I tell semi-formal from formal?

Does the prompt give the recipient a name? A name means semi-formal: "Dear Mr Patel," and "Yours sincerely,". No name means formal: "Dear Sir or Madam," and "Yours faithfully,". That one question settles the salutation, the sign-off and the temperature of everything in between.

Are contractions allowed?

One or two across the whole letter read as natural. A letter built on them has slipped into the informal register, which costs Task Achievement just as over-formality does.

Can I use "Kind regards" instead of "Yours sincerely"?

In real correspondence, yes, and most examiners accept it. Under exam conditions "Yours sincerely" is the form the conventions teach and the one that cannot be marked down, so use it.

Mrs, Miss or Ms?

Ms, unless the prompt itself uses another title. Mrs and Miss assume marital status you were not told, and Ms is correct regardless.