Unit 7. Letters to Show Appreciation.

Focus Question 7.  Letter of Appreciation to Kind People.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Burke,

My name's Steven Jackson. I'm sure you both remember me because I'm the boy who fell off his bike and injured himself outside your house last month.

Anyway, the reason I'm writing is because after you gave me first aid, you made me promise to keep in touch and let you know how I was recovering. To be honest, I still feel slightly embarrassed to have ridden into a lamp-post, but I'm recovering steadily.

Anyway, let me tell you how grateful I am for the selfless kindness you showed me when I was lying injured on the pavement. My leg is still in plaster, so I still can't ride my bike yet. To be honest, I can't actually remember the accident, which is probably because I knocked myself out. Nevertheless, I really want to express my appreciation.

Therefore, although nothing I can do will be enough to reciprocate what you have done for me, I would like to invite you both to my house for dinner as a way to show my appreciation. 

Once again, thank you so much for your kindness. Please let me know if Friday evening at 7.pm is a good time for you.

Yours sincerely,

Martin Gray.

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Practice Task 1.  Appreciation for Charitable Donations.

Dear Colleagues,

I'm sure you all recall the compassionate appeal I made to you all last month regarding the fund-raising to pay for heart surgery for Dr. Black's baby daughter, Susanne. This letter is an up-date on the situation and also an opportunity for me, as organiser of the fundraising, to express my appreciation for the kind donations you all made.

In particular, I want to thank everyone most sincerely. Indeed, although we had hoped to raise eight thousand dollars, we actually received more than ten thousand. This is, of course, excellent news because we were not only able to pay for the life saving operation, but can also pay for the follow up care thanks to your generous contributions. Most importantly, you will all be delighted to learn that little Susanne is doing well, growing stronger every day and the prognosis is that she will make a full recovery.

In appreciation for your kindness, I would like to invite everybody to a pizza party for Wednesday's lunch. The venue will be the company dining hall. 

I hope to see you all there. Thank you so much for your contributions.

Yours sincerely,

Paul Davis.

Practice Task 2.  Appreciation to a Visiting Friend.

Dear Roberta,

I am just writing this letter to say thank you for visiting us last week. When you called the week before and mentioned that you might visit us if you were in Madrid, I wasn't really sure if you would have time because I know how busy you always are.

However, it was delightful to see you again and catch up on all the latest gossip, so we really appreciate you taking the time to pay us a visit. In fact, it is not just me who enjoyed you dropping by, the whole family were quite taken by you. In particular, it was great to see how well you got on with my two teenagers, Alicia and Bernadette. They were really impressed how well you spoke Spanish and of course we all appreciated it when you played the piano for us after dinner.

Perhaps we could arrange to get together again sometime in the near future. Would you be interested in joining us for a trip to the Reina Sophia Art Museum next month? The girls would love to see you again and so would I.

Please let me know if you can make it next month and thanks again for visiting last week.

Best regards,

Fiona.

Practice Task 3.  Appreciation to a Host Family

Dear Mr and Mrs Robertson,

It has now been three weeks since I left your lovely house in London, and I have now settled back into my normal life back home here in Lisbon. Naturally, I want to thank you for the warm hospitality you showed me while I was staying as a guest in your home.

In fact, I really want to express my heartfelt appreciation to all your family members for never letting me feel like I was an outsider. In particular, when we had family dinners, I never felt more welcome, and without the kindness of you all, I would not have learned so much about English language, culture and the parts of London you showed me. Also, my English has improved enormously, which will be a huge benefit to me in the future.

Finally, to show you how much I appreciate your kindness, I would like to reciprocate by inviting you and your lovely family to visit me and my family here in Lisbon sometime later this year. We have a large house, so there's plenty of space.

Please drop me a line to let me know when you'd like to visit. You will be most welcome.

Kind regards,

Luisa Carvalho.

Practice Task 4.   Appreciation to a Friend  Who Lent You Money.

Dear Sergio,

I have been meaning to write to you since I arrived here in Hamburg, but as you can imagine I've been really busy settling in the new apartment and getting used to the new job.  Anyway, now that I have time to write, I just want to tell you again how grateful I am to you for lending me the money. Thank you very much Sergio. Without your help, I don't think I could have accepted the job because the expense of relocation was so expensive.  

By the way, the job at the agency is going more than fine; in fact, I've already recruited two new accounts so my commissions will be huge next month, which will enable me to pay you back from my first salary. The local area is fantastic too, so we've really settled in here so comfortably.

Finally, Sergio, to show my appreciation to you, I want to invite you here to Hamburg for a trip. It's a great city, and I'm sure you'll love it, so if you can find the time to visit, please drop me a line so that we can arrange it.

Best regards, and thanks again !

Bobby.

 Vocabulary · a recalled product: a defective product that is taken off the market ·malfunctions: failures in operation · faulty: defective · apology: an admission of error or discourtesy accompanied by an expression of regret e.g. public apology · annoyance: Being bothered by something or someone e.g. She expressed annoyance at the slow service ·dissatisfaction: a feeling of unhappiness or disapproval, e.g. She expressed her dissatisfaction with the service Letters of Complaint Useful Phrases and Vocabulary · satisfaction: a happy or pleased feeling because of something that you did or something that happened to you ·attitude: the way you think and feel about someone or something · quality: how good or bad something is · to portray: to describe (someone or something) in a particular way ·incompetence: lack of the ability to do something well · to attend to: to give needed help or attention to (someone or something) · severe: very bad, serious, or unpleasant · to compensate: to give money or something else of value to (someone) in return for something ·to demand: to require (something) · hazardous: dangerous · a lawn mower: a machine used for cutting the grass on lawns · assembly: the act of connecting together the parts of something (such as a machine) · to chuckle: to laugh in a quiet way · a welded edge: to join pieces of metal together by heating the edges until they begin to melt and then pressing them together · a coupler: something combined with something else · to misuse: to use (something) incorrectly · hassle: to bother or annoy (someone) constantly or repeatedly

Common Expressions.

Opening a letter of complaint.

Introducing your complaint.

- I am writing this letter to protest about the plan to ...

- I am writing this letter to express my disappointment in relation to the proposal to ...

- I am sorry to have to inform you of the following unfortunate situation:  Last week when I visited your ...

- I am writing to express my unhappiness about your decision / plans to ...

- I am writing to make clear / to lodge my displeasure (show my irritation / frustration)  at your plans to ...

- I am sorry to have to complain in relation to the following unfortunate situation, which occurred at your ...

- I am writing in connection with an unfortunate experience I had when I visited your store / business etc...

- I am writing this letter to bring to your attention my disapproval of  your decision / proposal to ...

- I am writing this letter to complain about an incident that happened on (date) at (time) at (place)

- I am writing this letter to express my dissatisfaction with the poor service I experienced when I ...

- I am writing in connection with ...

Developing your complaint.

- The reasons for my complaint / objections are three-fold: First of all, ... Also, ... In addition, ...

- Unfortunately, I found the standard of professionalism and workmanship to fall well below what I had come to consider to be an acceptable level in regard to ...

- I am very disappointed with the poor standard(s) of service / workmanship / professionalism I encountered when I visited your ...

- Something that I feel particularly aggrieved about is that ...

- Another source of real dissatisfaction is that ...

- This was not what I had expected.  In fact, it is quite the opposite; 

- Although, according to your staff, I should have got / the product should have / the service should have included, in fact it fell short of this expectation...

- Notwithstanding the fact that I was assured by your sales assistant / employee that ...

- On using your service / product, I was quite surprised to discover that, despite being assured by your company employees that it would work perfectly, when I got it home, in fact the product failed to ...

Asking the recipient to take action:

- I sincerely hope that you will take my complaint seriously

- I trust you will take appropriate action to remedy this situation in the immediate future so that we can put this unfortunate incident / event(s) behind us.

- I am fully confident that we can overcome this unfortunate situation and come to a mutually agreeable resolution.  I trust it would not be inconvenient for you to now act to redress this problem by ...

- I would be sincerely grateful if you could ...

- I hope you will give your immediate attention to this matter...

- I fully anticipate that you will take remedial steps to resolve this matter to our mutual satisfaction.  I therefore expect you to ...

- In view of these circumstances, I trust you will see that it would be unfair if I were not given some kind of compensation for my loss / inconvenience ... Therefore, it only seems fair that you provide me with ...

- As a valued customer, I fully expect that you will provide me with ...

- In order to satisfactorily address my grievance, I feel that what would be fair (what would suit me best) would be if you were to ...  

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