You took your family to a nearby restaurant. You were disappointed with the meal and wish to complain to the manager. Write a letter to the manager of the restaurant. In your letter: - explain why you were at the restaurant - describe the problems - write about the action you want the manager to take
Sample Response
Dear Sirsir,
I am writing this letter to let you know of the unpleasantdispleasing experience that I had when I visitedwhile I came to your restaurant “Sumptuous Dine” last eveningrestaurant “Sumptuous Dine”, last evening. I visited with my familycame there along with my family only to findonly to have found the awful service and poor qualitydetestable taste of the food Deletewhich was served.
Yesterday was my birthday, sofor which, my family and I decided to go to your well-reviewed restaurantan acclaimed eatery in the city, your restaurant. However, our plans and happiness were ruinedwent down the drain. We ordered our favorite dishes from the menuon the menu card and found a flyto find a fly in our soup and foul-smelling, rotten saladsrotten salads with a stench. Moreover, the curry we ordered was not cooked properly, which caused us all to leaveled all of us to move out of the place and the experience ruined the occasionthat’s how your restaurant acted as a wet blanket for us.
Kindly ensure the restaurant's hygiene and food qualityhygiene and quality of the place, as our experience was starkly at odds with your reviewswhich was starkly contrary to your reviews. Also, please train your staff to be more courteousemploy hospitable staff.
Yours sincerely,
Emre
Why this response received Band 6.0
The letter communicates the birthday context and the food problems clearly, and its paragraph sequence is easy to follow. Its main limitation is an uneven formal tone, with emotive expressions and an action request that remains fairly general. Prioritize a courteous, specific remedy—such as an investigation, apology, or refund—while replacing idiomatic complaints with precise professional language and correcting awkward complex clauses.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The purpose is clear and all three bullet points are covered, but the requested action is only briefly developed and the tone is sometimes overly emotive.
Request a specific resolution and maintain a firm but courteous formal tone throughout the complaint.
Coherence and Cohesion
The letter follows a sensible sequence from context to problems and requested action, with clear paragraphing despite some overloaded links.
Break the long sentence about leaving the restaurant into shorter units and make the final request a fuller concluding paragraph.
Lexical Resource
The writer shows a good range of complaint vocabulary, but several expressions sound exaggerated or unnatural in a formal letter.
Replace phrases such as “went down the drain” and “acted as a wet blanket” with precise, professional descriptions of the impact.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A variety of sentence structures is attempted, but awkward verb forms, relative clauses, and punctuation reduce accuracy.
Revise constructions such as “while I came” and “only to have found,” and check comma use around relative clauses.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
You took your family to a nearby restaurant. You were disappointed with the meal and wish to complain to the manager. Write a letter to the manager of the restaurant. In your letter:
- explain why you were at the restaurant
- describe the problems
- write about the action you want the manager to take
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.