A friend who lives in another country has invited to you come and stay with him/her on your next holiday. You are too busy to accept the invitation. Write a letter to your friend. In your letter: - Thank him/her for the invitation - Explain why you cannot come - Give him/her your other news
Sample Response
Dear Rosella, HowDear Rosella, how are you doing? When I receivedgot your letter last week I realized we haven'thaven‘t talked in monthsmonth. Thank you so much for sendingincluding the pictures of your new house and inviting us to visit you in Brazil this summer. I'veI always wanted to go there, but I am afraid we will not be able to visit this summermake it this summer. Maybe you can visit us instead in Australia? We have just moved to the coast three months ago3 month ago and I have decided to quit my office job. Instead, weInstead we are now running a small café in a historic beach house. It is quite exciting but alsoexciting, but also a lot of work: I get up at 5 a.m. every morning and we usually close after 11 p.m. The house was quite run down when we bought it, but now it looks fantastic. UnfortunatelyObviously, I can not close the café for several weeks during the summerduring summer as we only opened it a few weeks agowe just opened a few weeks ago. We also adopted a puppy named „Spotty“ we can not take on the trip. I'veI attached a few pictures with this lettera few pictures to the letter and I hope they will convince you to come here this summer. Just let me know. Best wishesYours Sincerely, A. B.
Why this response received Band 7.0
The letter is warm, engaging, and thorough: it thanks the friend, clearly explains why the trip is impossible, and gives substantial personal news. The main limitation is recurring grammatical inaccuracy in otherwise fluent sentences, especially with articles, plurals, and verb forms. The highest-priority improvement is to proofread these basic forms carefully while dividing the news and explanation into clearer paragraphs.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
All three bullet points are developed with relevant detail, and the personal, enthusiastic tone is well suited to a close friend.
Use a consistently informal closing rather than the more formal ‘Yours Sincerely.’
Coherence and Cohesion
Ideas follow a clear sequence from thanks and refusal to the café, the puppy, and the alternative invitation.
Separate the refusal, personal news, and invitation to Australia into distinct paragraphs.
Lexical Resource
The response uses a good range of natural vocabulary, including ‘run down,’ ‘historic beach house,’ and ‘adopted a puppy.’
Check fixed expressions and time phrases so forms such as ‘in months’ and ‘three months ago’ are consistently idiomatic.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The writer uses varied sentence structures successfully, but several errors occur with articles, plurals, tense, and clause boundaries.
Proofread for missing articles and plural endings, and separate or link clauses correctly in the sentence about Spotty.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
A friend who lives in another country has invited to you come and stay with him/her on your next holiday. You are too busy to accept the invitation. Write a letter to your friend. In your letter:
- Thank him/her for the invitation
- Explain why you cannot come
- Give him/her your other news
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.