Letter to the Editor About a Road That Needs Repair

Identify the road exactly — its name, where it starts and ends — then describe its condition and the consequences: accidents, longer journeys, ambulances that cannot pass. A complaint letter is judged on how usable the information would be to someone deciding whether to act, so vagueness is the main way marks are lost.

The question: Write a letter to the editor about the bad condition of the road in your area.

The format

Identify the road exactly

The whole letter depends on this. Give the road its name, say where it begins and ends, and name a landmark on it. A complaint that an authority could act on without asking a follow-up question is what this task is testing.

The formal frame

The Editor, the newspaper and its address at the left; the date; a subject line; Sir; the request for space; three body paragraphs; Yours faithfully, your name and your address.

• Subject: name the road, not just “bad road”.
• No contractions and no exclamation marks anywhere in the letter.
• Sign with your full name; a formal letter is not anonymous.

Body — condition, consequence, request

Describe the surface as it is: how long it has been like that, how large the holes are, what happens in rain. Then the consequences — accidents, longer journeys, vehicles refusing the route, emergencies. Then the request to the roads authority or the local council.

• Measure things approximately rather than vaguely: holes a foot deep, not very big holes.
• Give one incident if you can; a named consequence carries more weight than a general risk.
• Say when the road was last repaired, if you can — it turns a complaint into a case.

Close

End with the request and nothing after it. A formal letter does not close with good wishes, and adding a friendly line at the end is a register error.

Model answer

Model answer (about 195 words)

The Editor

The Daily Observer

Motijheel C/A, Dhaka

5 September 2026

Subject: The condition of College Road, Feni

Sir,

I request you to publish this letter in your columns so that the concerned authority may take note of the state of College Road in Feni town.

The road runs for about a kilometre from the Trunk Road junction to the government college gate, and it has not been resurfaced since 2019. Most of the bitumen has gone. There are now holes across the full width of the road near the girls' school, some of them a foot deep, and after any rain these fill and become impossible to judge from a moving vehicle.

Three consequences follow. Rickshaws and CNG auto-rickshaws refuse the route after dark or charge double for it, which falls hardest on the students who use the road daily. Minor accidents are frequent; in July a motorcyclist broke his arm near the school gate. And because the road serves the college and two schools, several thousand people are affected every working day.

I therefore request the Roads and Highways Department and Feni Municipality to resurface this stretch before the next monsoon, or at minimum to fill the holes near the school.

Yours faithfully,

Md Rezaul Karim

Feni

What earns and loses marks

• Give the road a name and two endpoints. “The road in our area is very bad” is the version most scripts write, and it is unusable to anyone who might act on it.
• Approximate measurements beat intensifiers — “a foot deep” tells the reader more than “very deep”.
• One dated incident is worth a paragraph of general risk.
• Offer a fallback request. Asking for resurfacing “or at minimum” for the holes near the school shows judgement and makes the letter harder to dismiss.
• 🚨 No closing pleasantries. A formal letter ends at the request, then the subscription.

Mistakes to avoid

• ✗ Hoping for your kind cooperation and thanking you. Yours ever, ✓ Yours faithfully, — the informal subscription and the extra pleasantry are both register errors
• ✗ The road is very bad and we are suffering. ✓ It has not been resurfaced since 2019 and most of the bitumen has gone.