On a recent holiday, you lost a valuable item. Fortunately, you have travel insurance to cover the cost of anything lost. Write a letter to the manager of your insurance company. In your letter: - describe the item you lost - explain how you lost it - tell the insurance company what you would like them to do
Sample Response
Dear Sir or Madam, I am writing this letter to inform you that I have recently lost a mobile phone during my holiday in Pondicherry and this item is covered under my travel insurance policythis item is insured. It was an Apple iPhone 16 which cost me approximately 120,000 rupees. Since I have insurance coverage for my mobile phone from your company, I am hoping to get my insurance compensationmoney. The incident occurred when I was on a holiday trip to Pondicherry frombetween 26 May 2025 to 29 May 2025. I was on Paradise Beachbeach on 28 MayAugust when I lost my mobile phone somewhere on the beachin the sand. I vigorously searched for the item for more than an hour but it was nowhere to be foundit was nowhere. I immediately lodged an FIR atin the nearest police station and the FIR registration number is CH-25470145. Since I hold insurance coverage for the mobile phone, I would like to claim the insurance amount for the lost phone. As per the terms of the policypolicies of the insurance, I am eligibleliable to claim an amount of 85,000 as an insurance reimbursementrefund for the lost item. Please find the invoice and the FIR copy for the lost mobile phone with this letter. I look forward to hearing from you soon. Yours faithfully, Aakash Saurabh
Why this response received Band 6.5
The letter covers the required claim details clearly and uses suitably specific insurance vocabulary, including information about the phone, police report, and requested reimbursement. Its main weakness is the contradictory timeline, compounded by repetition and the absence of paragraphing, so the highest priority is to establish one consistent sequence of dates and organise the item, incident, and requested action into distinct sections.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The response describes the item, explains the loss, and asks for the insurance payment. However, the date inconsistency between the May holiday and losing the phone on 28 August weakens the factual clarity of the claim.
Make the dates consistent and add any claim reference or policy number if available.
Coherence and Cohesion
The order is mostly logical, but the date contradiction and repeated claim statements reduce coherence. Paragraphing is also missing.
Organise the claim into item details, incident details, and requested action, with one consistent timeline.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is appropriate for an insurance claim and includes useful terms such as invoice, FIR, and insurance coverage. Some legal/insurance wording is slightly inaccurate.
Use precise claim language, especially eligible to claim and reimbursement rather than liable to claim.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Most grammar is clear, but there are errors in prepositions, articles, and sentence patterns.
Check date ranges, location phrases, and expressions such as nowhere to be found.
Write this task while it is fresh
Try the same task now. It helps you remember the feedback and write better next time.
IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
On a recent holiday, you lost a valuable item. Fortunately, you have travel insurance to cover the cost of anything lost. Write a letter to the manager of your insurance company. In your letter:
- describe the item you lost
- explain how you lost it
- tell the insurance company what you would like them to do
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.