You recently saw an advertisement about a business conference that can be helpful for your work. Write a letter to your manager asking permission to attend the conference. In your letter say: - what the conference is about how you know about the conference - explain to him/her - why it is important that you attend this conference
Sample Response
Dear Mrs [Surname]Dear Mrs Patricia, My name is Anna FergusonI am Anna Ferguson, a senior officer atin your New Jersey office. I am writing regardingin regard to a business conference which willwould take place in New York from 22 to 26 Septemberfrom 22nd to 26th September entitledon 'Green Entrepreneurship & Management Skills'. I hope you will permit meI am hoping that you would permit me to attend this conference and give me the opportunitygive me a chance to perform better in my rolebetter serve my position using the knowledge I gainwith the knowledge learned. This conference will be hostedThis conference is being hosted by IPOC, a renowned business research organisation, and it will be led byit would be presided over by industry expertssome industry experts. I learned about it from an advertisement published on 12 August in the Daily Business People newspaper. The conference would cover different aspects of green business and entrepreneurship, steps to engage in forward-thinking policies for environmental concerns, policies affecting human rights and implementing changes and evaluating progress. As we are planning to comply with the green business policies, I can contribute to that from the theories and ideas learned from the discussion. I therefore request permissionwould hereby request you to kindly authorize me to attend this conferencethis convention and oblige thereby. I hope to receive your permission soon. Yours sincerely, Anna Ferguson
Why this response received Band 6.5
The letter clearly identifies the conference, explains how it was advertised, and links attendance to the organisation's green-business plans in an appropriately respectful tone. Its main limitation is expression: several formal phrases are unnatural, and the long list of conference topics is not grammatically parallel. Prioritise stating two concrete workplace benefits in direct, idiomatic language and organising the request into clear paragraphs.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The letter achieves its purpose and covers the conference, source of information, and professional value with relevant supporting detail.
Make the benefit more concrete by explaining exactly how one or two conference lessons would be applied in the office.
Coherence and Cohesion
The ideas follow a clear request-to-justification sequence, but the single-paragraph presentation and a lengthy topic list reduce readability.
Use separate paragraphs for the conference details, its workplace relevance, and the closing request.
Lexical Resource
There is a good range of formal workplace vocabulary, although several collocations such as better serve my position and oblige thereby sound unnatural.
Prefer direct phrases such as perform my role more effectively and I would appreciate your approval.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The response uses varied complex structures, but awkward verb patterns and weak parallelism recur in the conference-topic sentence.
Make lists grammatically parallel, for example by using a consistent series of noun phrases or gerunds.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
You recently saw an advertisement about a business conference that can be helpful for your work. Write a letter to your manager asking permission to attend the conference. In your letter say:
- what the conference is about how you know about the conference
- explain to him/her
- why it is important that you attend this conference
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.