The road in front of your house was damaged a long time ago and nothing has been done about it. Write a letter to the municipal authority. In your letter: - introduce yourself - explain the condition of the road - suggest what the authority should do
Sample Response
Dear Sir or Madam, I am a resident of one of the major suburbs of Johor BahruJohor Bahru city, and I am writingwriting this letter to express my disappointment and frustration withover the inaction and negligence of theour municipal authority regarding thea damaged road. I requested our municipal office to repair the road, which got damaged because of excessive rains and transportation of heavily-loaded vehicles, in front of my house almost a year ago. HoweverBut, surprisingly, no action has yet been taken, and there is no indication thatno visible action has been taken yet to show that the damaged road is going to be repairedrebuilt in the near futureanytime soon. As a result, this road has become unsafe even for motorcyclistsreally dangerous for even riding a motorbike on it, and also poses a risk to larger vehicleslet alone large vehicles. It even becomes more terrible for travelling, especially when it rains and the water accumulates in the potholes of the damaged road surface because people can not really see the road properly when driving on it. ThereforeSo, I would like to request you to take urgent actiontake the necessary steps on an urgent basis to repairin order to fix the damaged road in front of my house beforeas soon as possible before a serious accident occurssome major accidents happen. Yours sincerely, Yan Lee
Why this response received Band 7.0
The letter has a clear formal purpose, explains the road's hazards in useful detail, and makes an appropriately urgent request for action. Its main limitation is presentation in a single dense paragraph, compounded by several awkward or repetitive expressions that reduce precision. The highest-priority improvement is to organise the introduction, problem description, and requested remedy into separate paragraphs while tightening the wording of the road conditions and safety risks.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The response addresses all bullet points, sustains a suitably formal tone, and explains both the long delay and the resulting danger with relevant detail.
Identify the neighbourhood or address more specifically and state the practical action expected from the authority beyond a general request to fix the road.
Coherence and Cohesion
The information progresses logically from complaint to cause, consequences, and requested action, but the single-paragraph format makes the letter unnecessarily dense.
Separate the self-introduction, description of the road, and requested solution into distinct paragraphs with clearer internal focus.
Lexical Resource
There is sufficient range for a formal complaint and road-safety description, although several collocations are awkward or repetitive.
Use more precise phrases such as 'heavy rainfall,' 'heavy vehicles,' and 'unsafe for motorcyclists,' and reduce repeated references to the damaged road.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Complex sentences are frequent and generally controlled, but some long constructions, punctuation choices, and comparative forms are less natural.
Shorten overloaded sentences and revise structures such as 'dangerous for even riding' and 'more terrible for travelling' for accurate, natural syntax.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
The road in front of your house was damaged a long time ago and nothing has been done about it. Write a letter to the municipal authority. In your letter:
- introduce yourself
- explain the condition of the road
- suggest what the authority should do
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.