Today, we will look at another IELTS general training task 1. This task is a reply to a friend who will come to visit your city/country. The letter would score 7.5 in the test. Find out why below.
A friend has written a letter to you informing about his or her plan to visit your country/city.
Write a letter to him/ her. In your letter, write:
– what he or she can do in your country/city
– advise him/her about the place he could stay at
– suggest to him/her what to pack and bring while coming to travel to your country/city.
You do NOT need to write any addresses.
Begin your letter as follows:
Dear ……..,
Dear Beth,
Hope you are doing great. I am very exhilarated to know that you will come to my city with your family next month. It is an excellent decision to visit Singapore during your children’s school vacation and I am sure you all will enjoy your time.
After you reach my city, we can book tickets for Night Safari, Adventure Cove Park and Universal Studio. Those are quite popular among tourists and I have specifically selected them considering your children.
I would love to have you at my house. I have a large house and you will enjoy your privacy. However, if you would like to stay separate, my suggestion is Bukit Timah Road. So book the Banana Leaf Hotel or Pandora Hotel if you must stay at a Hotel. But I insist that you stay at my place.
As I know, your princess daughter is only three years old. You should pack her food and suitable dresses for the summer. It is advisable to bring the necessary medicines as without a prescription, you won’t be able to purchase any medicine from here.
See you at Changi Airport on the 28th of July.
Best regards,
Mandy
Task achievement
The writer has covered the requirements of the task clearly and sufficiently. All the bullet points have been covered clearly.
Band 8
- Covers all requirements of the task sufficiently
- Presents, highlights and illustrates key features/bullet points clearly and
appropriately
Coherence and cohesion
Paragraphing has been used sufficiently and appropriately. Cohesion is managed well, and ideas have been organised logically.
Band 8
- Sequences information and ideas logically
- Manages all aspects of cohesion well
- Uses paragraphing sufficiently and appropriately
Lexical resource
Vocabulary has been used well with some flexibility and accuracy. ’Exhilarated’ would be more appropriate if changed to ‘excited’ – ‘I would love to have you at my house’ could be rewritten ’I would love you to stay at my house’ – ‘if you would like to stay separate’ – ‘if you would like to book your own accommodation’
Band 7
- Uses a sufficient range of vocabulary to allow some flexibility and precision
- Uses less common lexical items with some awareness of style and collocation
- May produce occasional errors in word choice, spelling
Grammatical range and accuracy
There are frequent error free sentences but a few errors in punctuation. A variety of complex sentences have been used. The first two sentences of the third paragraph could have been joined together to form a complex sentence i.e ‘I would love to have you at my house. I have a large house and you will enjoy your privacy’ – ‘’I would love you to stay at my house, it’s very large, and you would have plenty of privacy’.
Band 7
- Uses a variety of complex structures
- Produces frequent error-free sentences
- Has good control of grammar and punctuation but may make a few errors
This is an example of a very good response to the task. Could you improve it further? If you are preparing for your IELTS test and want to find out a bit more about general task 1 , check out our post giving five tips to improve your IELTS writing task 1! Our candidate would have scored 8 for task achievement and coherence and cohesion, with grammar and vocabulary scoring 7 each, giving an overall score of 7.5. Is there anything that surprised you about the score for this letter? Have your say, and comment in the section below! Click here for the full public IELTS task 1 writing descriptors.
If you need your writing corrected and rated, make sure that you check out our writing corrections and feedback service!
