Letter to Your Friend About How the Sundarbans Help Us

This letter informs rather than persuades, so the body is organised by kind of benefit: the Sundarbans as a shield against cyclones and tidal surges, as a home for wildlife including the Royal Bengal tiger, and as a source of livelihood for the people who live around it. Close by noting that the forest needs protecting.

The question: Write a letter to your friend about how the Sundarbans help us.

The format

Group the benefits before you write

This letter informs, and information needs grouping. Three kinds of benefit — protection, wildlife, livelihood — is the standard division and it gives the middle paragraph a structure the reader can see.

• Label the groups in the prose: the first reason, second, third.
• One or two sentences each; do not let one group swallow the paragraph.

Anchor each group in something local

A letter about the Sundarbans written from Khulna should sound like it: what people said after a cyclone, who in the area works in the forest, what is visible from where you live.

• Attribute local knowledge — the older people in our neighbourhood said.
• ⚠️ Do not invent precise figures; thousands of families is safer and reads as well.

Add the threat in one sentence

Close the middle paragraph by noting that the forest is shrinking, then invite your friend to visit. One sentence is enough — a paragraph on threats answers a different question.

Model answer

Model answer (about 180 words)

Khulna Sadar, Khulna

5 September 2026

Dear Priya,

Thank you for your letter. You asked why people here talk about the Sundarbans the way they do, and since I have grown up two hours from it I will try to explain.

The first reason is simply shelter. When a cyclone comes up the bay it hits the forest before it reaches us, and the mangroves take the worst of the wind and the surge. After Sidr the older people in our neighbourhood said openly that the forest had stood in front of them, and nobody argued. Second, it is the last place the Royal Bengal tiger lives wild, along with spotted deer, crocodiles and more birds than I can name — which matters even to those of us who will never see any of them. Third, it feeds people. Honey collectors, fishermen and the golpata cutters all live off the forest, and thousands of families here depend on it directly.

It is also shrinking, which is the part nobody likes discussing. Come in the winter and I will take you. Give my love to your parents.

Yours ever,

Shanta

What earns and loses marks

• Group the benefits and signal the grouping — “the first reason”, “second”, “third”. A reader can follow three labelled points far more easily than eight unlabelled ones, and examiners mark for organisation.
• 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

• ✗ The Sundarbans is the largest mangrove forest in the world and it is very important for our country. ✓ When a cyclone comes up the bay it hits the forest before it reaches us. — explain the importance instead of stating it