You are going to visit the town where your friend went to university. Write a letter to your friend. In your letter: - explain why you will be visiting the town - give details of where you will be staying - ask your friend to recommend some evening entertainment
Sample Response
Dear Rohan,
Hope this letter finds you in good health and spiritsspirit. I haven’t heard from you since we went hiking in the mountainsdid some mountain hiking together about a year ago. Anyway, you will surely be gladyou surely will be glad to know that I'll be visiting Granville—the townGranville - the town where you went to university. I'll be there from 7 to 10 Octoberfrom the 7th of October till the 10th of the month to attendfor the purpose of attending a big car auction to buyin order to buy an old but good car for myselfme at an affordable price.
I'll be staying at the Maple Leaf HotelMaple Leaf hotel in the city centrein the downtown of your city which is located right at the intersection of Jenkins Avenue and O’Conner Street. Now, I'm not too sure exactly how far you are from the hotelhow far exactly you're from the hotel, but I'd be more than happy to see you at my hotel. HoweverBut, if you're too busy to visit me during one of those weekdays because of your work, please just let me know where I can enjoy some good Japanese foodsome nice Japanese foods, along with some nice oriental music, induring the evening.
I guess, that should do it for now, but please do feel free to visit me when I arrive in your city.
Warm wishes,
William
Why this response received Band 7.5
The letter is warm, purposeful, and easy to follow, with clear details about the visit, accommodation, and the desired evening entertainment. Its main limitation is a cluster of awkward or repetitive expressions, including imprecise wording about location and food; the highest-priority improvement is to refine collocations and sentence structures so the friendly message sounds consistently natural and polished.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The response fully covers every bullet point with specific details and maintains an appropriate informal tone for a friend.
Frame the entertainment request more explicitly as a recommendation and ask for one or two named venues or activities.
Coherence and Cohesion
The letter is clearly paragraphled and progresses smoothly from the reason for visiting to accommodation and evening plans, with only minor overuse of conversational linkers.
Reduce repeated openers such as 'Anyway', 'Now', and 'But' so the connections between ideas feel less signposted.
Lexical Resource
There is a good range of vocabulary for travel and social plans, but several collocations are awkward, including 'in the downtown' and 'Japanese foods'.
Use more natural phrases such as 'in the city centre', 'Japanese food', and 'a car for myself'.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A wide variety of sentence forms is used with generally good control, though a few malformed or incomplete structures interrupt accuracy.
Correct structures such as 'how far you are from the hotel' and ensure informal sentence fragments are used sparingly.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
You are going to visit the town where your friend went to university. Write a letter to your friend. In your letter:
- explain why you will be visiting the town
- give details of where you will be staying
- ask your friend to recommend some evening entertainment
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.