You want to sell some of your furniture. You think a friend of yours might like to buy it from you. Write a letter to your friend. In your letter: - explain why you are selling - describe the furniture - suggest a date - when your friend can come and see the furniture
Sample Response
Dear Johnson,Dear Johnson, Hope all is well at your end. I'm writing this letter to you because I have some furnitureI've some furniture to sell, and I'd rather have you buy itthem instead of complete strangerssome complete strangers. I'm trying to sell some furniture because I'm planning to move to another city for professional reasonsfor some professional reason. I just don’t want to transport it all the waycarry them all the way to that city because transporting it that farcarrying them that far would probablywould most probably damage them. So, I thought that it'd be a good idea to let you know about the furniture before I sell them, in casein case if you might be interested in buying itwould feel interested to buy them. Speaking of which, the furniture includes a few oak chairs,a few chairs, made of oak wood, a large dining table, made of mahoganymade of mahogany tree, and a couple of sofa chairs. I think that you would like the furniture since they seem to be in good conditiongood shape and condition. Besides, the prices are also reasonable. So, please feel free to drop by my place, preferably sometime next weekendin the next weekend, so that you can have a look at my furniture and decide whether to purchase them or not. Warm wishes, Davis
Why this response received Band 6.5
The letter has a clear purpose, an appropriately friendly tone, and enough relevant description to cover the main points. Its main weakness is presentation: the response is one dense paragraph, the proposed visit time is vague, and several awkward phrases reduce naturalness. The highest priority is to organise the content into short paragraphs and give a precise date and time for the visit.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The purpose is clear and all requested points are addressed, although the suggested visit time is given only vaguely as next weekend.
Propose a specific date and time so the final practical requirement is fully and precisely developed.
Coherence and Cohesion
The ideas follow a sensible sequence, but the entire letter is presented as one dense paragraph and some linking is repetitive.
Use separate paragraphs for the reason, furniture description, and visit arrangement, with less reliance on repeated causal links.
Lexical Resource
The letter uses a sufficient range of vocabulary and some specific furniture terms, but several collocations are awkward or imprecise.
Replace phrases such as professional reason, in case if, and mahogany tree with more natural, precise wording.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A mix of simple and complex structures communicates the message clearly, though agreement, pronoun, and clause-construction errors recur.
Check noun-pronoun agreement and revise awkward constructions such as interested to buy so complex sentences remain accurate.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
You want to sell some of your furniture. You think a friend of yours might like to buy it from you. Write a letter to your friend. In your letter:
- explain why you are selling
- describe the furniture
- suggest a date
- when your friend can come and see the furniture
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.