You stayed at your friend’s house when you participated in a business seminar in Australia. You left a file with important documents in the room where you stayed. Write a letter to your friend. In your letter: - describe the file - say where you left it - ask your friend to return it to you by post
Sample Response
Dear Farah, It was great to see you after so longafter such a long time. I would also like to thank you again for being such a generous hostsuch an awesome host by offering to let me stayoffering me to stay at your house during my business seminar. Anyway, the reason, for which I am bugging you again with this letter, is that while I left your home last Friday, I believe that I accidentally left a file with some important documents in it. I realised that the file was missingcame to know about this file when I arrived home yesterday morningonly after arriving at my home yesterday morning. If I remember correctlyIf I remember it correctly, I think that I may have left the file in the bottom drawer of your TV stand in the living room where I was sleeping. I am pretty sure that you should have no trouble identifying the filewon’t miss the file since it is a standard-sized yellow file envelopea standard size, yellow colour file envelope that has my name tag on it. The file also containsBy the way, the file contains the financial documents needed for my quarterly reportsome important financial documents. Please send this file to me by couriermail this file to me in courier service as soon as you canas soon as possible because without these documentsbecause, without these documents, I won’t be able to prepare my next quarterly report for my company'scompany CEO. Stay fine and have fun. Best wishesYours sincerely, Claudia
Why this response received Band 7.0
The letter communicates its purpose clearly and gives useful, specific details about the file, its location, and the need for its return. Its main limitation is the recurring awkward phrasing and preposition choice, alongside a closing that is more formal than the friendly opening. The highest-priority improvement is to use more natural collocations and consistently informal language while preserving the clear detail.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The purpose is clear, all three bullet points are fully covered, and the details make the request easy to act on.
Maintain a consistently friendly register, including an informal closing that matches the relationship with the recipient.
Coherence and Cohesion
The information progresses logically from context and discovery to location, description, and the request, although it is presented as one dense block.
Separate the opening, file details, and request into short paragraphs and reduce unnecessary transitional phrases.
Lexical Resource
The vocabulary is sufficiently varied and specific, but several collocations sound unnatural, such as asking to send something in courier service.
Use natural combinations such as send it by courier and let me stay to make the language more precise.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A range of complex sentences is attempted successfully, though recurring article, preposition, and clause-construction errors reduce control.
Review complex clauses and prepositional phrases, especially constructions such as when I left and if I remember correctly.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
You stayed at your friend’s house when you participated in a business seminar in Australia. You left a file with important documents in the room where you stayed. Write a letter to your friend. In your letter:
- describe the file
- say where you left it
- ask your friend to return it to you by post
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.