You have just spent a weekend staying at a Hotel in London. When you get home you find that you have left a bag at the hotel. Write to the hotel manager. In your letter: - introduce yourself - describe the bag and its content that you left there - explain what you want the manager to do about it
Sample Response
Dear Sir or Madam, I recently stayedI have recently stayed at your London Hilton Hotelhotel on Park Lane and regrettably left my bag in my roomthe room I stayed in. I am writing to seek your assistanceassistance and help in recovering itregarding this and I would really appreciate it if you could send it by couriercourier it to my home address soon. I am Hubert Raymond, a senior executive at the globalGlobal management consulting firm McKinsey and was in Londonhad been to London on businessfor a business matter. I stayed at your hotel on 20 and 21 Septemberon 20th and 21st September in room 310. After I returned home to Cardiff on 21 September,After I returned home to Cardiff, on 21st September, I realised that I had left my bagI realised that I missed a bag at your hotel. The bag was probably placed in the cabinet beside the bed. It is a medium-sizedsize, brown leather bagleather made brown bag that has a large zipper on the top. It has two side pockets and the main zipper was locked. It contains a few dresses of mine, a diary, two fountain pens, a calculator, a PDA and a few important business documents. I really need my PDA and the documents for an upcoming presentation at my office. I would highly appreciate your cooperation in sending the bag to my home address which is stated at the top of the letter. I would bear the courier cost. Please use the 'Same Day Emergency Delivery' service of DHL. Thank you in advance for your kind cooperation. Yours faithfully, Hubert Raymond
Why this response received Band 7.5
The letter provides all the practical information the manager needs, including the guest's identity, stay details, a thorough bag description, and a specific delivery request, while maintaining a suitably formal and courteous tone. Its main weakness is recurring awkward collocation and tense choice, compounded by dense presentation. Prioritise more natural phrasing and organise the details into clear functional paragraphs.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The response fully addresses every bullet point and develops the description and requested action with specific, useful details.
Keep the request concise by retaining essential recovery details while trimming unnecessary occupational information.
Coherence and Cohesion
The content progresses logically from the situation and identification to the bag details and delivery request, but the lack of paragraph breaks makes it visually dense.
Use separate paragraphs for the stay details, the bag and its contents, and the requested delivery arrangements.
Lexical Resource
The vocabulary is varied and sufficiently precise for describing the bag and arranging its return, although collocations such as 'missed a bag' and 'leather made' are inaccurate.
Use idiomatic phrases such as 'left my bag behind', 'a medium-sized brown leather bag', and 'cover the courier cost'.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A range of simple and complex sentences is handled effectively overall, with occasional problems in tense, article use, and noun modification.
Use past simple for the completed hotel stay and review modifier order and relative clauses for more consistently accurate sentences.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
You have just spent a weekend staying at a Hotel in London. When you get home you find that you have left a bag at the hotel. Write to the hotel manager. In your letter:
- introduce yourself
- describe the bag and its content that you left there
- explain what you want the manager to do about it
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.