You took your family to a nearby restaurant. You were disappointed with the meal and wish to complain to the manager. Write a letter to the manager of the restaurant. In your letter: - explain why you were at the restaurant - describe the problems - write about the action you want the manager to take
Sample Response
Dear Sir or Madam, I am writing to make a complaintraise my concern about the meal we had at your restaurant last week. I visited your restauranteatery last Sunday to enjoy dinner with my family. I heard about your restaurant on the radio and thought I would give it a trythought to give it a try. However, the meal was disappointing.But the meal experience was disappointing. When we entered your restaurant, we saw a special menu written on a board and one of the items was fried rice with fish curry. We decided to try it, which we later regretted deeply. When we were served the dish, we found chilli powder on the surface of the fish. After we inquired about it, one of your attendants told us that they left it aside for one hourkept it off for one hour after marinating it with chilli powder with some other ingredients. Even though we felt terrible about it, we continued our meal. The dish tasted mediocre and was not up to our expectationsThe dish tasted mediocre, and not up to our expectations at all. Unfortunately, my son started feeling illbad after we reached home and he vomiteddisgorged twice. I had high expectationsa high expectation from your restaurant but got equally frustrated. I would really appreciate it if you could take appropriate action regarding this incidentproper action about this inconvenience that we had due to the food we ate at your restaurant. Please instruct your chefs to follow proper hygiene standardsproper hygienic manner and if they do not know how to prepare thissuch kind of food, please do not offer it to customers. Yours faithfully, Lettisha James
Why this response received Band 6.5
The complaint gives a clear account of why the family visited, what went wrong with the meal, and the resulting illness, making its purpose easy to understand. Its main limitation is an imprecise and occasionally unprofessional request for action; prioritise a specific remedy such as an investigation, refund, apology, or staff training, and organise the background, problems, and requested response into separate paragraphs.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The complaint explains the visit, meal problems, health effect, and desired action. The remedy could be more specific and professional.
Ask for a clear remedy such as an investigation, refund, apology, or staff training.
Coherence and Cohesion
The sequence is easy to follow, but the single paragraph makes the formal complaint look less organised.
Use separate paragraphs for background, problem details, and requested action.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is adequate but some choices are awkward, too informal, or imprecise.
Use natural complaint vocabulary such as “vomited”, “food safety”, and “hygiene standards”.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
There is a mix of simple and complex sentences, but errors with verb patterns, articles, and collocation appear regularly.
Check prepositions, article use, and sentence boundaries in long complaint sentences.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
You took your family to a nearby restaurant. You were disappointed with the meal and wish to complain to the manager. Write a letter to the manager of the restaurant. In your letter:
- explain why you were at the restaurant
- describe the problems
- write about the action you want the manager to take
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.