You want to rent out a small apartment to a family, and you have decided to advertise it. Write a letter to the editor of a local newspaper asking to advertise your ad on the front page of the newspaper. In your letter: - give details of the ad that you want to publish - mention that you want the ad to be published on the front page - say how you would like to pay for the advertisement
Sample Response
Dear Sir or Madam,
I am a resident of Longhorn city, and I thought that your local but very popular newspaper would be a great platform to publish my ad for renting my small apartment.
This advertisement should include information like how many persons can stay in the apartment, what kind of amenities or services it offers to its tenants, and how long the initial lease should be. Apart from these, the advertisement should include my contact details so that prospective tenants can contact me.
So, based on the information above, I want you to publish an advert for me in your newspaper, and I think that it should be a few lines long. But, regardless of how many lines or words should my advertisement contain, I want it to be published on the front page of your newspaper so that it gets a maximum number of views.
And as for the payment of the publishing cost of the ad, please send me an invoice, citing the amount of money to be paid, and I will immediately send a check to you. If you want, I could deposit the money into your bank account also.
I hope to hear from you soon.
Yours faithfully,
Peter Lazarus
IELTS Writing Correction
- 1. Capitalize place name Original: city Suggested revision: City Why it matters: Both words in this proper place name require capitalization.
- 2. Use natural advertising phrase Original: platform to publish my ad for renting my small apartment Suggested revision: place to advertise my small apartment for rent Why it matters: This wording expresses the intended advertising purpose more naturally.
- 3. Use natural plural Original: persons Suggested revision: people Why it matters: “People” is the natural plural when referring generally to apartment occupants.
- 4. Fix embedded clause order Original: how many lines or words should my advertisement contain Suggested revision: how many lines or words my advertisement contains Why it matters: An embedded clause uses statement word order rather than question word order.
- 5. Use reader-focused wording Original: gets a maximum number of views Suggested revision: reaches as many readers as possible Why it matters: A newspaper advertisement reaches readers rather than gets views.
- 6. Use concise transition Original: And as for Suggested revision: Regarding Why it matters: This transition introduces the payment topic more directly and formally.
- 7. Use concise fee term Original: publishing cost of the ad Suggested revision: advertisement fee Why it matters: This concise term avoids a wordy and unnatural noun phrase.
- 8. Use invoice wording Original: citing the amount of money to be paid Suggested revision: stating the amount due Why it matters: An invoice normally states an amount due rather than cites money to be paid.
- 9. Clarify alternative payment Original: also Suggested revision: instead Why it matters: “Instead” clearly marks the bank transfer as an alternative to sending a check.
- 10. Give actual advert details Suggested revision: State the apartment's actual capacity, amenities, lease term, and contact details instead of listing the categories the advert should contain. Why it matters: The task asks for the content of the advertisement, but this paragraph supplies no concrete property details.
Suggested Rewrites
- city City
- platform to publish my ad for renting my small apartment place to advertise my small apartment for rent
- persons people
- how many lines or words should my advertisement contain how many lines or words my advertisement contains
- gets a maximum number of views reaches as many readers as possible
- And as for Regarding
Why this response received Band 6.5
The letter’s strongest feature is its clear request for front-page placement and its flexible payment proposal by cheque or bank transfer. Its main limitation is task fulfilment: it never supplies the actual apartment details needed for the advertisement, instead listing categories of information that an ad should contain. Prioritise drafting the concrete advert content—capacity, location, rooms, amenities, rent, lease term, and contact details—before discussing placement and payment.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Detailed feedback by IELTS writing criterion after the annotated essay.
Task Achievement
The front-page request and payment method are clear, but the essential advertisement content is not provided with any concrete apartment details.
Supply the property’s actual capacity, location, rooms, amenities, rent, lease length, and contact information for publication.
Coherence and Cohesion
The letter is logically divided into purpose, proposed content, placement, payment, and closing, although some paragraph openings are mechanical.
Replace openings such as ‘So’, ‘But’, and ‘And as for’ with direct topic sentences appropriate to a formal request.
Lexical Resource
The vocabulary is adequate for advertising and payment, but several phrases such as ‘platform to publish my ad’, ‘maximum number of views’, and ‘publishing cost’ are unnatural.
Use concise terms such as ‘place an advertisement’, ‘reach the widest readership’, and ‘advertising fee’.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The response attempts varied structures, but errors in tense, embedded-question word order, articles, and conditional phrasing are noticeable.
Correct the indirect question to ‘regardless of how many lines my advertisement contains’ and keep the request consistently in the present.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
You want to rent out a small apartment to a family, and you have decided to advertise it. Write a letter to the editor of a local newspaper asking to advertise your ad on the front page of the newspaper. In your letter:
- give details of the ad that you want to publish
- mention that you want the ad to be published on the front page
- say how you would like to pay for the advertisement
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.