Mrs Barrett, an English-speaking woman who lives in your town, has advertised for someone to help her in her home for a few hours a day next summer. Write a letter to Mrs Barrett. In your letter: - suggest how you could help her in her home - say why you would like to do this work - explain when you will and will not be available
Sample Response
Dear Mrs Barrett,
I recently came across your advertisement seeking help at homeregarding your need for help in your home for a few hours a day next summer, and I would be pleased to offerI would love to offer my assistance.
I could help you with a range of household tasks, such as cleaning, organising, preparing light meals, and running errands. If you have a garden, I would also be happy to help water plantsassist with watering plants and general upkeep. Additionally, if you need any help with any administrative tasksadministrative tasks done, such as sorting paperwork or managing appointments, I would be happy to help with these as wellI am comfortable with that as well.
I would like to take on this roletake up this opportunity because I enjoy helping others, and I believe it would be a rewarding experience. Furthermore, I am looking for temporary work during the summer, and this role suits my schedulefits well with my schedule.
I will be available from June to August, every morning until early afternoon. However, I will be unavailable on weekends due to prior commitments. Please let me know if my availability aligns with your requirements.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Yours sincerely,
Alia Gomez
Why this response received Band 8.5
The letter fully achieves its purpose with a warm, professional offer of help, a useful range of specific household tasks, a credible motivation, and precise availability. Its strongest features are the natural paragraphing and consistently clear, flexible language; there is no significant score-limiting weakness. The highest-priority refinement is to specify exact weekday hours or a preferred daily duration so Mrs Barrett can assess the arrangement immediately.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
All three bullet points are fully and appropriately developed, with specific tasks, convincing reasons, and clear available and unavailable periods.
Add the exact weekday start and finish times or confirm the number of hours available each day.
Coherence and Cohesion
Each communicative purpose has a focused paragraph, and the progression from offer to motivation and availability is seamless.
As a minor refinement, connect the task offer and availability with one sentence confirming flexibility within the stated weekday period.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is precise, varied, and natural across household work, motivation, scheduling, and polite correspondence.
Maintain this precision while replacing the slightly formal 'aligns with your requirements' with a warmer phrase if a more personal tone is desired.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A wide range of sentence structures is used accurately, with strong control of conditionals, lists, punctuation, and polite forms.
Preserve this level of accuracy while adding any exact daily hours in a concise, grammatically parallel form.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
Mrs Barrett, an English-speaking woman who lives in your town, has advertised for someone to help her in her home for a few hours a day next summer. Write a letter to Mrs Barrett. In your letter:
- suggest how you could help her in her home
- say why you would like to do this work
- explain when you will and will not be available
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.