Writing workshop 20: Writing a character reference

Descriptions of people can be found in narratives, letters of recommendation, character references, police reports, newspaper articles, and so on. In this kind of task, the description is only one more element of the whole picture, and you must combine several styles of writing. Example tasks:

• Somebody in your community whom you have known for a long time wants to spend a year looking after children in an English-speaking country, and has asked you to write a character reference. You should write a detailed reference, indicating how long and in what capacity you have known this person, the strengths and weaknesses of their personality, and why you would support their application.

• You have seen the following competition advertised in an international student travel magazine: Win a holiday for you and your friend! We are looking for the winner of this year’s ‘Best Friend’ award and are offering a three-week all-inclusive holiday in the Caribbean. Write an article explaining why you are nominating your friend and saying how your friend would benefit from the holiday.

• A colleague at work has applied for a job as Chief Administrator of an international school and you have been asked to a character reference for the applicant. You should indicate how long and in what capacity you have known the applicant, comment on his or her administrative skills and mention any information about the person's character (e.g. ability to form relationships with colleagues, manner with the public) that you think might be relevant to the job.

Now the practice most students are given in class or in standard textbooks only accounts for a general description of a person, which would include the following information:

• Physical description: What the person looks like.
• Personality: What the person is like.
• Hobbies: What the person likes.
• Personal relationship: How you met this person and what your relationship is like.

The problem with this layout is that it partially addresses the task in hand. Once again, a writing task demands that we combine two types of writing, in this case the description of a person with writing a formal letter or an article, and we must show a good command of the conventions of each kind of writing.

A typical paragraph plan for writing a character reference letter would consist of:

• Paragraph 1: Talking about your relationship with the person.
• Paragraph 2/3: Talking about the qualities of the person and experience.
• Paragraph 4: You have to decide whether to include some negative quality to sound more objective or not. Anyway, if you include anything negative try to present it in a way that leads to a positive assessment of the person.
• Paragraph 5: Recommeding the person.

Some useful phrases you may want to include are:

Relationship
I have (known) ... for ... years, both as (a friend) and as (a work colleague).
In that time ... // Over the years ...
My most recent (contact) with him/her was ...
As part of his/her (duties), he/she ...

Qualities
I have always known him/her to be ...
I remember him/her being ...
He/She always gives the (impression that) …
He/She has always proved himself/herself to be extremely ...
As a (colleague) / With (children), he/she ...
On a (social) level, he/she ...
In fact, I would go as far as to say that he/she ..

Negative qualities
I regret having to say anything negative about ... but ...
Sometimes his/her ... can (lead to) ...
The one (drawback) ...  // The only (weakness) ...

Recommendation
I believe that ... would make a (good) ...
For the reasons I have given I have no hesitation in (supporting) ... application for …
I am pleased to (recommend) ... for the (position) of...

You can see samples of reference letters in Microsoft.

With information from First Certificate Expert, Longman.