You have recently stayed with an old friend for a few days after not seeing each other for a long time. Write a letter to this friend. In your letter: - say how you felt about the visit - refer to something enjoyable that you did while staying with him/her - invite your friend to visit you
Sample Response
Dear John, I hope you are doing wellHope you are doing great. Thank you for letting me stay at your househaving me at your house last week and it was really great to meet you after such a long timeafter a long. The experience was amazing and I had the time of my life when we visited different placeshopped to different places during my stayduring the time. I'm sorry the visit is overI regret that it is over! I hope you will comeI am hoping you would come and stay at my house during your next vacation. As you know I am an ardent football fan and I still cannot get the wonderful memories of that football match that we enjoyed together at the Emirates Stadium out of my head. I still get chills downon my spine when I think about it. Remember those thrillingtantalizing final ten minutes of the game when Liverpool FC turned it around by scoring two late goals, and then the entire stadium went berserk with joy. I wish I had had a video camera to capturehad a video camera to capture those sensational moments! By the wayAnyway, would you fancy coming over to my placedropping by at my place on Sunday afternoon? I am having some high school friends over, and if you cancould come, that would be simply fantastic and turn the gathering intoas the gathering will turn into our high school reunion. Also, I have not seen some of our old classmatessome of these guys in ages, so I am pretty sure it will be a great occasionthis is going to be a great experience for all of us. I look forward to seeing you soon. Warm wishes, Sam
Why this response received Band 7.5
The letter is lively, affectionate, and fully engages with the visit, the memorable football match, and the invitation, using a convincingly friendly voice. Its main weakness is organisation: presenting the entire response as one block obscures the shifts between reflection, shared experience, and invitation, while a few expressions are awkward. The highest-priority improvement is to divide the content into purposeful paragraphs and polish the less natural collocations.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The communicative purpose is fully achieved, all bullet points are developed with specific detail, and the informal tone is consistently suitable for an old friend.
Clarify whether the main invitation is for the next vacation or the Sunday gathering so the requested visit feels completely consistent.
Coherence and Cohesion
The ideas follow a logical sequence and cohesive devices work well, but the lack of paragraph breaks weakens the visible organisation of the letter.
Use separate paragraphs for appreciation of the visit, the football memory, and the invitation to make the progression immediately clear.
Lexical Resource
The response shows a broad and expressive vocabulary, though a few collocations such as 'after a long' and 'chills on my spine' are not natural.
Choose idiomatic combinations such as 'after such a long time' and 'sent chills down my spine' while retaining the lively range.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A variety of complex sentences is handled accurately overall, with only occasional tense, punctuation, and phrasing lapses.
Review hypothetical past references and sentence boundaries, particularly where long sentences contain several linked ideas.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
You have recently stayed with an old friend for a few days after not seeing each other for a long time. Write a letter to this friend. In your letter:
- say how you felt about the visit
- refer to something enjoyable that you did while staying with him/her
- invite your friend to visit you
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.