One of your colleagues was in charge of organising an annual executive conference, and he/she has been successful in doing it. You want to congratulate your colleague on that. Write a letter to this colleague. In your letter: - congratulate your colleague for successfully organising the event - mention what you liked about it the most - say how much you would like him/her to organise other events as well
Sample Response
Dear Mr Watson,
I am writing to you to congratulate you on the efforts that you madedid to make the annualyearly executive conference successful. Taking responsibility as the event managerGetting the responsibility of an event manager was a milestone in your career. You did a commendable jobIt was a commendable job and made us feel proud to work with you.
In particularOn the face of it, you have excellent communication skillsyou have the gift of gab, and certainly, you are a born communicator, and I really enjoyed your conversation withthe small talk of you with the chief guest who had been to London. Besides, there were no technical glitchesthe technical glitch was out of the question, and the speaker had no difficultydid not feel any difficulty while operating the overhead projector and microphonesthe overhead projector, mics and to name but a few. On top of that, a motivational speech delivered by you before the lunch break re-energisedenergises all the attendeespersonnel to keep listening for another half an hourto listen for another half an hour.
In addition, I would recommend youI would recommend your name for organising any event in future. You handled every situation effectively. Your planning and executionplanning and its execution in the nick of time made us like you even moremade you like more. Now, our company is going to organise a new year party. If a planner like you take responsibility, no one will be able to stop it from making successful. I hope you will also help other colleagues develop similar skillsI hope you will also assist other personnel to be like you.
I hope to meet you soon.
Yours Sincerely,
Why this response received Band 6.5
The response fully addresses the congratulatory purpose, gives specific examples of what was appreciated, and strongly supports the colleague organising future events. Its organisation is easy to follow, but frequent awkward collocations, overused idioms, and grammatical errors reduce precision and naturalness. The highest priority is to replace forced expressions with direct language and check sentence structure carefully.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The letter clearly fulfils its purpose and develops all three requested points with relevant examples.
Keep the praise focused and ensure every supporting detail directly reinforces the colleague's success.
Coherence and Cohesion
The response has clear paragraphing and logical progression, though some connectors are formulaic and a few long sentences are cumbersome.
Reduce mechanical linking phrases and divide overloaded sentences into cleaner units.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is varied and ambitious, but frequent unnatural collocations and forced idioms limit precision.
Prefer accurate, natural phrases over expressions such as misapplied idioms or unnecessarily elaborate wording.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The writer attempts varied complex structures, but agreement, complementation, and sentence-construction errors recur throughout.
Check subject-verb agreement and revise awkward verb patterns so complex sentences remain grammatically complete.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
One of your colleagues was in charge of organising an annual executive conference, and he/she has been successful in doing it. You want to congratulate your colleague on that. Write a letter to this colleague. In your letter:
- congratulate your colleague for successfully organising the event
- mention what you liked about it the most
- say how much you would like him/her to organise other events as well
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.