A family member is coming to stay with you. He/she will be arriving by train in the morning, but you won’t be home until the evening. Write a letter to your relative. In your letter: - Explain arrangements you have made for them to have keys and get into the house - Tell your relative how to get from the train station to your house - Say when you will be home and suggest what you could do together that evening
Sample Response
Dear Marco, I'm writing to youI write you to say that I won'tI´ll wont be home until late tomorrow. There is an emergency meetingThere is emergency meeting at my workplaceat workplace. I made some arrangements for you to get into my house safelyget my house safely. Your train arrives at 7:00 a.m.arrives 07.00am and there is a carthere is car with my personal driver waiting for you. He will drive you downtowndrive you into downtown. From there you have to take a 15-minute walktake 15 minute walk to my place. If he drops you off then you´ll see a large orange buildingsee large orange building on the south side of Williams Streetstreet. You have to walk throughtrough the tunnel to get to First Streetto get First street. When exiting the tunnel, turn right at the police stationtake right from the police station and walk straight to the end of the street. My house has a yellow roofhouse is with yellow roof on your right-hand sideright hand side. The key is hiddenkey is hidden behind the greenhouse which is located in the back yardin back yard. We will definitely catch up when I arrive in the evening and we can watch some DVDs that I have.dvd-s what i have
Why this response received Band 6.0
The letter provides all the necessary practical information, especially detailed directions and a workable key arrangement, and its informal purpose remains clear. However, frequent errors with articles, verb forms, prepositions and sentence construction make the language awkward and sometimes slow comprehension. The highest-priority improvement is to proofread each sentence for a complete verb phrase and required articles before refining the directions.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
All three requested points are addressed with relevant details about transport, the hidden key, arrival time and an evening activity.
Add a friendly closing and clarify exactly how the relative will identify the driver and enter the locked house.
Coherence and Cohesion
The directions follow a broadly logical sequence, and basic time and location links help the reader track the route.
Group the arrival arrangements, walking directions and evening plan into separate paragraphs and use clearer transitions between them.
Lexical Resource
The response has enough practical vocabulary to communicate the route and arrangements, despite several awkward or inaccurate word combinations.
Replace phrases such as 'get my house' and 'house is with yellow roof' with natural combinations such as 'get into my house' and 'house with a yellow roof'.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Meaning is generally clear, but frequent errors in articles, verb forms, capitalization and relative clauses reduce accuracy.
Prioritise complete forms such as 'I won't be home', add missing articles, and use 'DVDs that I have' for the final clause.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
A family member is coming to stay with you. He/she will be arriving by train in the morning, but you won’t be home until the evening. Write a letter to your relative. In your letter:
- Explain arrangements you have made for them to have keys and get into the house
- Tell your relative how to get from the train station to your house
- Say when you will be home and suggest what you could do together that evening
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.