Register and Tone for Audience and Purpose: Question 2

Worked solution

Assessment focus

This question tests whether a candidate can judge register against all three factors of a task at once (form (a text message), audience (a close friend of the same age), and purpose (a casual invitation)) rather than assuming one register is always “correct” regardless of context.

Why B is correct

Option B (“Hey, wanna study together after school tmrw?”) is warm, casual and natural. It uses the relaxed contractions and abbreviations (“wanna”, “tmrw”) typical of texting a close friend, while still being clear about the invitation. This matches the informal register that suits the audience, purpose and form exactly.

Why the distractors are wrong

• A uses stiff, bureaucratic phrasing (“I am writing to enquire whether you would be available to engage in collaborative study”) that is far too formal and distant for texting a close friend, it reads as though addressed to a stranger.
• C mixes two incompatible formality levels in one message: the casual opener “Hey” and texting shorthand (“tmrw”, “thx”) sit alongside stiff, formal vocabulary (“I hereby propose we convene”), which no real register would combine when writing to a close friend. Unlike B, which stays consistently informal throughout, C’s register is inconsistent and unnatural.
• D is impersonal and businesslike (“To whom it may concern”), a phrase used for addressing an unknown official, entirely wrong for a message to someone the writer knows well.

Mark scheme

• 1 mark for selecting B.
• 0 marks for any other option. No partial credit, since this is a discrete single-answer selection question.