Letter to Your Friend About Your Aim in Life

An informal letter about your aim in life has five parts: your address and the date at the top right, the salutation "Dear [name]", a body of two or three short paragraphs, a closing such as "Yours ever", and your name. State the aim in the first body paragraph, give your reasons in the second, and close by asking after your friend.

The question: Write a letter to your friend telling him about your aim in life.

The format

Decide the aim before you decide the words

Pick one aim and commit to it in the first line of the body. A letter that weighs three possible careers and settles on none has no middle paragraph, because there is nothing left to give reasons for.

• Choose an aim you can say something concrete about — a subject you are taking, a place you would study.
• Write it as a plain statement: I want to become a doctor, not I have a dream of serving humanity.
• 🚨 Do not change your mind halfway through the letter.

Give the aim a source

The reason carries the content marks, and the strongest reason is an event rather than a principle — something you saw, someone you watched working, a moment that changed how you thought about the subject.

• One incident, described in two or three sentences.
• Then what you are doing now because of it: which subjects, what reading.
• Avoid serving the nation as your only reason; almost every script has it.

Turn the question back

Close by asking what your friend has decided. It gives the letter a reason to be answered, and the closing paragraph is where the two-way quality of an informal letter is judged.

Model answer

Model answer (about 180 words)

Green Road, Dhaka

5 September 2026

Dear Rafi,

I hope you are well. It has been almost a month since your last letter, and I have been meaning to reply properly rather than in a hurry. You asked me what I want to do after my examinations, and I have thought about it enough now to give you a real answer.

I want to become a doctor. It is not a sudden decision. When my grandmother was ill two winters ago we had to take her to the upazila health complex, and I watched a young doctor there work through a corridor full of people without once losing his patience. What struck me was not the medicine but the calm. I decided then that I wanted to be useful in that particular way. I am working hardest at Biology and Chemistry now, and I have started reading the newspaper's health pages to see what the profession is actually like.

I know it will take years and that the admission test is difficult. Still, having one clear aim has made studying easier rather than harder, because I no longer wonder what any of it is for. What about you? You used to talk about engineering — is that still your plan? Write soon and tell me. Give my regards to your parents.

Yours ever,

Sabbir

What earns and loses marks

• Name a concrete moment that produced the aim. An examiner reads dozens of letters saying I want to serve my country; one that describes a specific afternoon stands out immediately.
• Length is not the point — a letter of about 150 words that does the four parts properly beats a rambling 300-word one.
• Keep the tense consistent: a letter about something that happened stays in the past, a letter about a plan stays in the future.
• Ask at least one question of your friend, so the letter reads as one half of a conversation rather than a speech.
• Leave a clear blank line between paragraphs — layout marks are given for what the examiner can see at a glance.

Mistakes to avoid

• ✗ Adding your friend’s address below your own. ✓ Only your own address, at the top right. — the receiver’s address belongs on the envelope
• ✗ Yours faithfully, Sabbir ✓ Yours ever, Sabbir — a formal subscription in an informal letter