You live in a room in the college hostel which has severe problems. You would like to move into another room and need your hostel super's permission for that. Write a letter to the hostel super. In your letter: - introduce yourself - describe the problems - explain what type of room you would prefer
Sample Response
Dear Sir or Madam, My name is Aaron Johnson, and I have been living at a Trinity College hostelone of the Trinity college hostels for almost six6 months. My room number is 241, and I share it with another student. Regrettably, I am writing this letter to inform you about several serious problemssome of the severe problems that I have been dealing with for the last six months. First of all, this room is too small for two2 students. In fact, after placing two single beds thereafter setting there two single beds and two study tables, there is hardly any space lefthardly any extra space left in the room. Besides, the walls of the room on all sides remain dampdampened most of the time, producing a persistent unpleasant odourspreading some kind of bad odour, which is certainly harmful to our healthnot good for our health. In fact, because of this continuous foul odour, sometimes we cough. Finally, the attached bathroom rarely provides hot watervery seldom releases hot water, and as a result, we have to shower in cold watertake a shower in cold water which makes us ill during the wintermakes us sick, during the winter. Therefore, I would really appreciate it if you couldplease transfer us to another newly built or renovated roomroom which is remodelled or built new and has a reliable hot-water supply in the attached bathroomhot water supply in its attached bathroom. Yours faithfully, Aaron Johnson
Why this response received Band 7.0
The letter’s strongest feature is its full, specific explanation of the accommodation problems and the clear request for a more suitable room. Its main limitation is that all ideas are compressed into one block and several awkward expressions weaken otherwise clear communication. The highest priority is to separate the purpose, problems, and requested solution into paragraphs while correcting unnatural verb patterns and collocations.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The letter clearly establishes the writer’s identity, develops several serious room problems, and specifies the desired replacement in an appropriately formal tone.
Make the preferred room description even more explicit by stating that it must be larger, dry, and equipped with reliable hot water.
Coherence and Cohesion
The problems progress logically and linking phrases guide the reader, but the entire letter appears as one dense paragraph and some connectors are repetitive.
Use separate paragraphs for the introduction, the problems, and the requested room, while reducing repeated use of “In fact”.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is sufficiently varied and includes relevant terms such as “foul odour” and “attached bathroom”, though several collocations are unnatural.
Replace awkward phrases such as “after setting there” and “releases hot water” with natural choices such as “after fitting in” and “provides hot water”.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A range of complex sentences communicates the message clearly, but errors in word order, clause construction, and punctuation recur.
Improve control of polite request structures and sentence boundaries, for example by writing “I would appreciate it if you could transfer us”.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
You live in a room in the college hostel which has severe problems. You would like to move into another room and need your hostel super's permission for that. Write a letter to the hostel super. In your letter:
- introduce yourself
- describe the problems
- explain what type of room you would prefer
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.