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PHOTOCOPIABLE
 
© Cambridge University Press 2008
2
Get students to work through the exercise. Students might 
want to know why this letter does not end 
Yours faithfully
– they may know that letters usually end 
Yours sincerely
if 
they begin with the name of the person, e.g. 
Dear Ms Tashita
. 
Tina Grey has probably used 
Yours sincerely 
because she 
knows the people she is sending the letter to – and 
Yours 
faithfully
would be too formal and distant. Remind students 
that they should use 
Yours faithfully
only when the recipient is 
unknown and they begin the letter with 
Dear
 
Sir/Madam
.
3–4
Tell students to read the list of questions before they read 
the letter – they cannot do the skimming task unless they 
know what they are looking for. Set a two-minute time limit for 
Exercise 3 to discourage students from reading every word of 
the text. Students can read the text in more detail in Exercise 4.
5
You could discuss this as a whole class.
Focus on … compound nouns
Get students to work through this section in pairs. You might also 
like to make the point that the two halves of some compound 
nouns are separated by a hyphen. Explain that there are no rules 
which determine whether a compound noun is one word, two 
words or two halves separated by a hyphen. Ideally, students 
should try and memorize how the noun appears in a dictionary; it 
is not the end of the world if they do not: native speakers might 
write the same compound noun in different ways.
More activities
1
Ask students to scan the text and fi nd the word 
should
. 
Elicit that 
should you wish
means ‘if you (should) wish’. 
Point out that sentences with inversion, like this, can be 
considered more formal than those that begin with 
if
. 
The next sentence could also have begun with 
should
– 
Should you still have any concerns
 … .
Inversion is 
also used in conditional sentences with 
were
and 
had
, 
e.g. 
Were you to need the loan facility, you would have 
to return the form by June 30th. Had I needed the loan 
facility, I would have returned the form by June 30th
.
2
Ask students to fi nd two examples of hyphens in the letter 
– 
4-weekly
(used twice), 
co-operation
. Elicit or explain that 
the fi rst one has been used because the writer is talking 
about ‘4 weekly’ ‘payments’ – not ‘4’ ‘weekly payments’ 
or ‘weekly pay cycle’, i.e. the hyphen is between the two 
linked words. The second one has been used because 
coop
has two vowel sounds, not one – although some 
people would not include a hyphen in this word. (A 
hyphen can also be used in 
coordinate
.)
3
Elicit or explain that hyphens can also be used to join 
words when talking about ages and periods of time. For 
example: 
My cousin is ten years old – I’ve got a ten-year-
old cousin, I’m going on holiday for three weeks – I’m 
going on a three-week holiday
.
Remind students to use 
the singular form of 
year
, 
week,
etc. in such hyphenated 
expressions.