You have a friend who lives in another country. Write a letter to this friend to visit you. In your letter: - invite him/her to a public event in your country - describe the public event - explain other plans you have for your friend - when he/she will visit
Sample Response
Dear Terry, I hope you are enjoying yourselfHope you are enjoying yourself and staying busy with workkeeping busy with your work as you always like to dojust as you always like to do. I'm writing this letter to invite you to one of the biggest, if not the biggest, and special public events of my country which is called “Independence Day”. HoweverBut, this event is will be especially significant this yeargoing to be even more special this time because we will be celebratingsince we are going to celebrate the 50th anniversary of our independencegolden jubilee of our independence. To give you a little idea about how we celebrate our independence day, there'll be huge and colourful parades at one of the largest stadiums of our capital city, where I currently live, which will also be attended by many dignitaries from around the world. At the event, you'll also get to enjoy the air show, whereair show where daringsome daring aerobaticaerobatics demonstrations of our military aircraft will be performedwill be on display. That eveningThen, at night, I also plan to take you outI also have a plan to take you out to enjoy some of the most beautiful and mesmerising fireworks you will ever seefireworks, you would ever get to see, followed by a special cultural show and dinner at our town hall. So, I'm hoping to meet you soon. Warm wishes, Zayed
Why this response received Band 7.0
The letter creates an enthusiastic, friendly invitation and vividly describes the Independence Day celebrations and additional evening plans. However, it never states when the friend should visit, leaving one explicit bullet point unanswered, and several long sentences are overloaded or awkwardly punctuated. The priority is to add a clear visit date or period, then divide the plans into shorter, more controlled sentences and paragraphs.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The invitation, event description, and additional plans are developed in a suitable friendly tone, but no date or period is given for the visit.
State exactly when Terry should arrive and, ideally, indicate how long the visit could last.
Coherence and Cohesion
The sequence from invitation to daytime and evening activities is easy to follow, though the single-block format and some overloaded sentences weaken organisation.
Group the invitation, event details, and other plans into separate paragraphs with shorter sentence units.
Lexical Resource
The response uses a broad, vivid range of vocabulary naturally, with only occasional awkward combinations such as biggest and special and aerobatics demonstrations.
Improve collocational precision by using expressions such as one of the biggest and most special events and aerobatic displays.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A wide range of complex forms is used with generally strong control, but unnecessary commas and heavily embedded clauses cause occasional awkwardness.
Remove misplaced commas and split the longest relative-clause structures into two accurately punctuated sentences.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
You have a friend who lives in another country. Write a letter to this friend to visit you. In your letter:
- invite him/her to a public event in your country
- describe the public event
- explain other plans you have for your friend
- when he/she will visit
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.