You have been doing some voluntary work to help your local community. However, now you are unable to continue doing this work. Write a letter to the manager of the organisation where you have been working. In your letter: - describe the work you have been doing - explain why you can no longer do this work recommend another person - who is interested in the work
Sample Response
Dear Mr Reeve, Hope you are well. I am writing Deletethis letter to inform you that, unfortunately,that sadly, I won’t be able to continue my voluntary work for your organisation because I will be movingas I will move to another city at the beginning of September. For contextJust so you know, I have been involved with your organisation for almost two2 years, and I must say that I have greatly enjoyed the experienceenjoyed it so much. Helping homeless people, collecting non-perishable food items from people in order to donate to your food bank, and cleaning our neighbourhood from time to time were some excellent work that I did. In additionBesides, I have learned howlearned about how to build a team and motivate its members in support of a worthwhile humanitarian causein a good humanitarian cause as well as how to coordinate their activities. In fact, after working here for almost 2 years, I started to consider every staff membereach and every staff of this organisation as my family. HoweverBut, as much as I would like to continue, the truth is I won’t be able to do so because I will have to move to another city with my family for work-related reasonsfor some professional reasons. However, before I leave, I would like to recommend Mr Marcus, one of my colleagues at my current office, who has expressed his interest to carry on with the task that I was doing. I hope you can meet him next Friday to discuss the role with him in detailtalk to him in detail. Thank you once again, andonce again and I will miss you all. Yours sincerely, John Trent
Why this response received Band 7.5
The letter communicates its purpose immediately and gives substantial, relevant detail about the voluntary duties, the reason for leaving, and the proposed replacement. Its main limitation is that the response is presented as one long block and contains several awkward grammatical and lexical choices. The most valuable improvement is to paragraph the three requested functions separately and proofread countable nouns, agreement, and natural collocations.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
All requested points are fully covered with clear supporting detail, and the friendly yet respectful tone suits a familiar manager.
Make the recommendation even more useful by briefly stating a relevant skill or quality that makes Marcus suitable for the role.
Coherence and Cohesion
The message develops logically from the decision to leave through past duties and reasons to the replacement, but the single long paragraph limits clarity.
Create distinct paragraphs for the work performed, the reason for leaving, and the recommendation, and trim repeated references to two years.
Lexical Resource
The response demonstrates a good range of vocabulary for community work and personal reflection, although some word combinations and noun choices are awkward.
Use more natural forms such as 'valuable work', 'every member of staff', and 'take over my duties'.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
There is a good range of complex structures and meaning remains clear, but occasional fragments, agreement errors, and punctuation slips reduce accuracy.
Proofread sentence completeness and noun-verb agreement, especially 'Hope you are well' and 'were some excellent work that I did'.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
You have been doing some voluntary work to help your local community. However, now you are unable to continue doing this work. Write a letter to the manager of the organisation where you have been working. In your letter:
- describe the work you have been doing
- explain why you can no longer do this work recommend another person
- who is interested in the work
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.