You live in an apartment building but are having trouble with the behavior of your neighbors. Write a letter to inform the building manager of the situation. In your letter: - explain who you are - describe the situation concerning your neighbors’ behavior - suggest how the situation could be dealt with
Sample Response
Dear Sir/Madam, I am writing to you to complain about a recurring problem I have been experiencinga recurring situation I have been encountering as a resident of Congress Condominiums. To begin, my name is David Stallworth and I am a resident of apartment 5A. I have been living in my condominium for the last three3 years, and my first two years here were very enjoyablethe first two were very enjoyable. For the most part, I am still quite content with my home hereoverall living situation. However, in the last year, the unitscondominiums on both sides of mine were sold to my new neighbors. They are very nice, but the trouble is that they often come home very late and play music extremely loudlyare quite young and have a penchant for coming home very late and playing music incredibly loudly, which disturbs my sleep. I would appreciate it if you would speak to both neighbors about the late-night noisespeak to my neighbors about this. I do not want to cause them any trouble, but I would like them to be reminded of the building regulations regarding noise and clearly understand that playing loud music at night is disturbing other residents, including menegatively affecting their neighbors. I look forward to your response. Yours faithfully, David Stallworth
Why this response received Band 7.5
The letter communicates its complaint clearly, covers every requested point, and uses precise, appropriately formal language with excellent grammatical control. Its main limitation is that the entire message is presented as one continuous block, which weakens the visual organisation despite the logical flow. Divide the introduction, description of the disturbance, and requested action into distinct paragraphs to make the progression immediately clear.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The purpose is immediately clear, all three bullet points are fully addressed, and the formal, measured tone suits a complaint to a building manager.
Add a little more specific information about the frequency or timing of the disturbance to make the complaint even more actionable.
Coherence and Cohesion
Ideas progress logically from the writer's identity and background to the noise problem and a reasonable requested solution, but the response lacks paragraph breaks.
Separate the letter into clear paragraphs for the opening purpose, details of the problem, and requested action.
Lexical Resource
A wide and precise vocabulary, including terms such as recurring situation, penchant, and building regulations, conveys the complaint effectively.
Prefer slightly more natural phrasing in places, such as saying that the neighbouring apartments were sold rather than the condominiums on both sides.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A wide range of complex sentence structures is handled accurately, with punctuation and agreement consistently controlled.
Maintain this high level of control while occasionally shortening long sentences to sharpen emphasis and readability.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
You live in an apartment building but are having trouble with the behavior of your neighbors. Write a letter to inform the building manager of the situation. In your letter:
- explain who you are
- describe the situation concerning your neighbors’ behavior
- suggest how the situation could be dealt with
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.