Letter writing

Imagine the following scenario.

Sarah Morris lives with her child at 123 High Street, Sheffield. She has been renting the property for three years. Two weeks ago the roof started leaking and the house is now suffering from damp. Sarah wants to write a letter to his landlord, Mr Singh, asking him to repair the roof.

Type the example prompts below one at a time into an AI text generator. After entering each prompt, check the result and ask yourself the following questions:

• Does the letter include enough information about the problem?
• How much would the letter need editing before it could be used? 
• Is there anything you could change about the prompt to improve the letter?

Prompt 1: “Write a letter to my landlord.”

Prompt 2: “Write a letter to my landlord about a roof that has been leaking for two weeks.”

Prompt 3: “Write a letter to my landlord about a roof that has been leaking for two weeks. The house is damp and I have a young child. My landlord is Mr Singh. My name is Sarah Morris. I live at 123 High Street, Sheffield.”

Here are some other example prompts you could use to write letters. Try using the prompts, then make some changes to them to see how it affects the results.

• Write an email to my housing authority about a noisy neighbour.
• Write a cover letter for a job application. The job is a fork lift truck driver for ‘The Moving Company’. I have 10 years experience.

Download a printable version of this activity