You recently did a short cookery course. The cookery school has asked for your feedback on this course. Write a letter to the course director at the cookery school. In your letter: - describe what you enjoyed about the course - say how much cooking you've done since the course - suggest another cookery course you'd like the school to offer
Sample Response
Dear Sir or Madam, Recently, I tookhave taken a short cookery course at your renowned institute, and I am writing this letter to express how pleased I was with the coursehow happy I am about the course, which I attended about a month ago, in an effort to enhance my culinary skillsculinary arts skills. I must admit that even though the course was taught intensively for a good period of four weeks, I felt like the time had passed rather quickly since I enjoyed the course so much. In particularBy the way, the best thing about the course was that it comprehensively taught me how to maketaught me about the art of making some Italian and oriental desserts quickly and easily. Besides, I enjoyed learning about the techniques for chopping meat effectivelytricks of chopping meats so nicely. After finishing the cookery course, I used some of my cooking skills to prepare some delicious desserts for the birthday party of one of my close friends in addition to preparing some of my favourite dishes for my family. FinallyBefore ending here, I would also like to ask you to offerrequest you to introduce a short course at your institute on preparing desserts using different kindsdesserts by using different kinds of tropical fruits and vegetables. Thank you once again for conducting such a useful course. Yours faithfully, Andre Dmitry
Why this response received Band 7.0
The letter answers all three requirements with relevant examples of what was learned, cooking done afterwards and a clear proposal for a future course. Its main weakness is style: the single-paragraph presentation and several conversational or unnatural phrases make the feedback less polished than it could be. Prioritise purposeful paragraphing and more natural formal expressions, especially when describing the course content and new-course request.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The enjoyable features, subsequent cooking, and proposed tropical-produce course are all clearly developed and maintain a suitable appreciative purpose.
Clarify how often the new skills have been used since the course and explain briefly why the proposed course would benefit learners.
Coherence and Cohesion
The content progresses logically through course enjoyment, later practice, and the new-course suggestion, but the one-paragraph format limits structural clarity.
Give each bullet point its own short paragraph after the opening purpose.
Lexical Resource
The response uses varied culinary vocabulary effectively, although phrases such as “tricks of chopping meats so nicely” and “before ending here” are unnatural.
Prefer precise expressions such as “knife skills for preparing meat” and “I would also suggest offering.”
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A range of complex sentences is used with generally good control, but tense choice and some wordy constructions are occasionally awkward.
Use the simple past for the completed course and simplify clauses, for example “I recently took a four-week cookery course at your institute.”
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
You recently did a short cookery course. The cookery school has asked for your feedback on this course. Write a letter to the course director at the cookery school. In your letter:
- describe what you enjoyed about the course
- say how much cooking you've done since the course
- suggest another cookery course you'd like the school to offer
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.