A formal request letter a lost certificate

This lesson shows you some useful formal request language for IELTS letters. I show you the question, a sample answer
and also provide two exercises to help you with formal request letter language.

The question
Your company sent you on a training course in another country and at the end of the training you got a certificate which
you have lost.
1.
2.
3.

Write a letter to the course organiser and tell him/her:

How you lost your certificate.
Why you need the certificate now.
What you need him to do for you.

Analysing the question

You should see that:

You need to answer all 3 parts of the question do not leave any out. It can be sensible to write a paragraph on each to make
it clear to the examiner
this is a more formal letter and you should try and use more language
you need to be able to make requests politely

Some more formal request letter language

Please is the magic word! To make the request more polite, try using Please would or Please could. The structure is
Please + could + you + verb e.g. Please could you send this back by return
Two alternative words are grateful and appreciate. They have slightly different structures so be careful:
Would appreciate + it + if
Would be grateful + if +

e.g. I would appreciate it if you sent this back by return

e.g. I would be grateful if you sent this back by return

The sample answer

Read my sample answer and then test yourself on the letter writing vocabulary in the exercise below.
Dear Sirs
I attended your course in Marketing Strategies for the Ice Cream Industry which was held in the Jubilee Centre in Brisbane
in November. I am writing to ask if it would be possible to send me a certificate confirming that I attended the course for all
four days.
I lost the original on my flight back to Canterbury. I had put in my briefcase along with all the course notes and foolishly I
left the briefcase on the plane. Qantas were unable to find the case when I contacted them and I suspect that a fellow
passenger probably took the case by mistake.
Please could you send me the replacement certificate by post. Unfortunately, my company will not accept a scanned copy
as an email attachment.
I would appreciate it if you would treat this as a matter of urgency because I am in the process of applying for a promotion
and I need to have all my certificates for this process.
Thank you for your help.
Yours faithfully