Email to Your Friend About a Journey by Boat

A journey email is a short narrative: when and where you set out, what the river and the banks looked like, and how the journey ended. Sensory detail is what earns the content marks here — the sound of the engine, the colour of the water at sunset — so choose two or three details rather than summarising the trip.

The question: Write an email to your friend describing a journey by boat.

The format

Pick three moments

Departure, one thing on the way, arrival. An email cannot carry more, and choosing which three is the part of the task being marked.

• Give the boarding point and the time.
• Choose the middle moment before you start writing.
• 🚨 Past tense throughout the description.

Use sound as well as sight

Most journey answers describe only what was visible. A sentence about what could be heard — or about the sound stopping — places the reader on the deck and costs nothing.

• One sensory detail that is not visual.
• One named place along the route.
• Avoid listing every stop.

Ask whether they have made the journey

Close by asking if your friend has taken the same route. It ends the email naturally and invites a reply.

Model answer

Model answer (about 140 words)

To: [email protected]

Subject: The launch journey to Barishal

Dear Mehedi,

I promised I would tell you about the launch journey, so here it is, three days late.

We boarded at Sadarghat at seven in the evening, which is worth doing for the chaos alone — porters, hawkers, three launches sounding their horns at once. Once we were out of the city the noise stopped completely. I stood at the rail for most of an hour watching the lights on the far bank, and the only sound was the engine and the water. My father slept; I could not. Somewhere near Chandpur the moon came up over the Meghna, and the river there is so wide that you cannot see the other side. We reached Barishal a little after five. Have you ever taken it? You should.

Yours ever,

Nayeem

What earns and loses marks

• Sound is the detail most students forget. “The only sound was the engine and the water” places the reader on the deck more effectively than any amount of description of the scenery.
• Write about 120 to 150 words in the body. An email answer of 250 words has usually become a letter with a subject line on top.
• 🚨 Do not add your postal address anywhere. That is the single clearest sign that a letter answer has been reused for an email question.
• Keep the subject line and the first sentence consistent — if the subject says one thing and the message opens on another, the answer looks assembled rather than written.
• Sign with your name only; no designation, no address, no phone number in an informal email.