Your friend is celebrating her birthday and has invited you to a party. You cannot attend because you have an important meeting that day. Write a letter to your friend. In your letter: - thank him/her for the invitation - explain why you cannot come - propose meeting on another day
Sample Response
Dear Martha, I hope you and your familyHope you and your family are doing great. It's been a long time sinceIt's been a long since we last saw each other. It was great to get your postcard from Dallas yesterday and I'm thrilled to learn that you're going to celebrate your birthday on 20th June. Happy birthday, Martha. I am so happy for you and wish you a happy and fulfilling year aheada prosperous life and a joyful birthday celebration. I would like to sincerelyprofoundly thank you for your invitation. Martha, I'm so sorry that I can't attend your birthday party as I will be in Manhattan the whole week for a work commitmentfor my professional responsibility. My company asked me to be there on 18th June to resolve some problems with an accounting system at our Manhattan officewe have in Manhattan. You will be in my thoughts and I owe you a birthday present! Could we meetI'll meet you after I return from my official trip—perhapstrip - perhaps during the first week of July. Many thanks for your invitation and happy birthday to you. Warm wishes, Fadi
Why this response received Band 7.0
The letter has a friendly personal tone and covers the invitation, reason for absence, and a later meeting, with enough specific context to communicate clearly. Its main limitation is uneven naturalness, including some overly formal collocations and one conspicuous grammatical omission. Use more idiomatic language for a close friend and suggest a more definite alternative date to make the response both warmer and more practical.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
All three bullet points are addressed with relevant detail and a generally suitable personal tone, although the alternative meeting remains somewhat vague.
Offer Martha a specific day or two in early July instead of only proposing a broad week.
Coherence and Cohesion
The message progresses clearly from birthday wishes and thanks to the reason for declining and the later meeting proposal, despite limited paragraphing and some repetition.
Group the thanks, explanation, and alternative arrangement into short paragraphs and remove repeated birthday wishes.
Lexical Resource
The response shows enough range for an informal letter, but expressions such as "profoundly thank you" and "professional responsibility" sound unnecessarily formal or unnatural.
Prefer conversational wording such as "thanks so much" and "a work commitment" for a more consistent friendly register.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Most simple and complex sentences are accurately formed, with only occasional errors such as the missing noun in "It's been a long since."
Proofread fixed time expressions and complete them accurately, for example "It's been a long time since we last met."
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
Your friend is celebrating her birthday and has invited you to a party. You cannot attend because you have an important meeting that day. Write a letter to your friend. In your letter:
- thank him/her for the invitation
- explain why you cannot come
- propose meeting on another day
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.