You normally go shopping in the area where you live. However, you think some of the facilities for shoppers could be improved. Write a letter to your local newspaper. In your letter: - say in general - what you like about shopping in your area - say what is wrong with the facilities - suggest how they can be improved
Sample Response
Dear Sir or Madam, I am a regular reader of your newspaper, and I am writing this letter to express my opinion about the local shops in our area where I like to do my shopping. I hope that you would be kind enough to publish these comments of mine so that the relevant authoritiesthe proper authority can look into thesethe matters and take appropriate actionactions. Generally speaking, the shops and the shopping facilities in our area are generally satisfactorynot really that bad since they all try to offer a great shopping experience to their customers. In fact, there is no shortage of amenities such as good lightinggreat lighting systems, access to clean drinking waterfacilities for clean drinking water and a great air conditioning system. However, when it comes to proper hygiene, sufficient parkingenough parking spaces and security (especially when shopping at nightespecially, when shopping at night), I am afraid that most of our shopping facilities are not up to the standards. Now, I understand that these problems will not get fixed overnight, but if our local government allocates additional fundingallocates some extra budgets in taking care of these issues while pushing the shop owners to be more proactive, I think that most of these issues willwould be resolved. Thank you for your attention. Yours faithfully, Rebecca Hall
Why this response received Band 7.0
The response gives a balanced account of useful facilities, specific shortcomings and a plausible route for improvement, while maintaining an appropriate tone for a newspaper. Its main limitation is that the proposed solution remains broad and the entire letter is presented as one paragraph, reducing impact. Prioritise specific remedies for hygiene, parking and night security and organise the three purposes into distinct paragraphs.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The positive features, facility problems, and broad improvement proposal are all relevant and clearly conveyed, though the solutions are not developed individually.
Recommend concrete measures such as more cleaning staff, additional parking spaces, better lighting, and security patrols.
Coherence and Cohesion
Ideas follow a clear positive-to-negative-to-solution sequence, but the single-paragraph format and repeated references to issues reduce cohesion.
Create distinct paragraphs for what works well, what is inadequate, and how each problem should be addressed.
Lexical Resource
There is sufficient range for discussing amenities and civic action, but repeated words and collocations such as “extra budgets” are occasionally imprecise.
Use “additional funding,” “meet acceptable standards,” and specific facility terms to make the recommendations more exact.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The response uses complex sentences accurately overall, with occasional errors in plurality, conditional consistency, and preposition choice.
Write “allocate additional funding to address these issues” and keep the conditional consistent with “if the government allocates, the problems can be resolved.”
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
You normally go shopping in the area where you live. However, you think some of the facilities for shoppers could be improved. Write a letter to your local newspaper. In your letter:
- say in general
- what you like about shopping in your area
- say what is wrong with the facilities
- suggest how they can be improved
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.