You have a pen pal and you are writing your first letter to that pen pal. In your letter: - describe your previous studies and/or work experience - describe your current activities, hobbies and interests - tell your pen pal that you will be visiting him/her
Sample Response
Dear David, I hope you are doing wellgreat. I am so excited to be your pen pal and to write my first letterand writing my first letter to introduce myself. I hope you will write back soonwrite to me someday as I would like to know more about you. As you already know I live in Manila, the capital of the Philippines and a bayside city on the island of Luzon, which mixes Spanish colonial architecture with modern skyscrapers. It is a lively city with more than a population of 1.8 million1.8 million population. Regarding my education, I have graduated fromcompleted my graduation from the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, andTomas, Manila and I earned a Bachelor of Business Administrationmy major was Bachelor of Business Administration. I finished my MBA at the University of the East in 2019 and soon after that, I started working for Ayala Corporation, oneCorporation - one of the largest holding companies in the Philippines. I am now a senior executive atin this company. I was delighted to learnwas so excited to know that you runmaintain a blog and I do tooas I also do it. You can visit my personal blog at www.daniel-francis.wordpress.com. In addition, I am a volunteerBesides, I am a volunteer for a charity organisation that works for disadvantaged peoplethe destitute and less privileged population in our city. I am so surprised that you also like travelling as it is my passion to be able to visit different parts of the world. I would like to thank you for inviting me to the UK. I am sure I will someday visit you and explore this great country. Take care and write back to mewrite me back when you have timewhen time allows you to do so. Warm wishes, Daniel Francis
Why this response received Band 7.0
The letter creates a warm, appropriate relationship with the pen pal and develops the writer’s education, employment, volunteering, blogging, and travel interests in useful detail. Its main limitation is the visit: saying it will happen ‘someday’ technically addresses the point but gives the reader no practical sense of when or what is planned. Prioritise adding a tentative visit period and one specific shared activity while tightening less relevant city description.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The informal purpose and all bullet points are covered, but the promised visit is vague and much less developed than the background and interests.
Give a tentative month or season for the UK visit and suggest one activity to do together.
Coherence and Cohesion
The letter progresses naturally from introduction and background to current interests and the proposed visit, with generally clear linking.
Use distinct paragraphs for studies and work, current interests, and future visit plans, trimming the extended Manila description.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is varied and suitable for an informal introduction, though several education, population, and hobby collocations are unnatural.
Use natural phrases such as ‘graduated from’, ‘earned an MBA’, ‘has a population of’, and ‘I also write a blog’.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A range of structures is used with generally good control, despite occasional article, preposition, agreement, and clause-boundary errors.
Proofread long sentences containing place descriptions and ensure countable nouns have accurate articles or plural forms.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
You have a pen pal and you are writing your first letter to that pen pal. In your letter:
- describe your previous studies and/or work experience
- describe your current activities, hobbies and interests
- tell your pen pal that you will be visiting him/her
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.