You work for a large company. Your manager has asked staff for ideas about how to improve the staff canteen. Write a letter to your manager. In your letter: - explain what problems the canteen has at the moment - suggest two changes that would improve it - say how staff would benefit from the changes
Sample Response
Dear Mr Clark,
I am writing in response to your request for ideas about the staff canteen. I use it almost every day, and I hope you find my comments usefulso I hope my comments are useful.
At the moment, there areAt the moment there are only four microwaves for more than two hundred staff, and staff often wait fifteen minutes in the lunchtime queuethe queue at lunchtime often takes fifteen minutes. The menu also rarely changesThe menu also changes very rarely, and there is nothing suitable for staff who do not eat meat. Several people therefore buy lunch elsewherebuy lunch outside instead.
I would suggest adding two more microwaves and opening the canteen half an hour earlier so that staff can stagger their lunch breaks over a longer periodopening the canteen half an hour earlier, so that the lunch break is spread over a longer period. I also recommend offeringIt might also be a good idea to offer one vegetarian dish each day, as several colleagues bring their own food for that reason.
These changes would give everyone more time to rest during their lunch breakmore time to rest before the afternoon, and I believe more staff would eat in the canteen rather than going out. I would be happy to help gather further suggestionscollect further ideas from my team if that would be useful.
Yours sincerely, Kenji Sato
Why this response received Band 8.5
The response is exceptionally clear and purposeful, linking specific canteen problems to practical changes and tangible staff benefits in a consistently professional tone. Its main limitation is only slight lexical repetition and relatively conservative wording in an otherwise highly controlled letter; the highest-priority improvement is to vary references to staff, food, and the canteen while retaining the present economy and precision.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The purpose is fully achieved, with concrete problems, more than two feasible changes, and clearly explained benefits for staff.
A brief indication of how the extra equipment could be funded would make the recommendations even more actionable.
Coherence and Cohesion
Information is sequenced effortlessly from purpose to problems, solutions, benefits, and a constructive offer of further help.
Keep the same efficient structure while varying repeated references to the canteen and staff where possible.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is accurate, natural, and appropriately formal, with precise expressions for queues, scheduling, and dietary needs.
Introduce a little more lexical variety when describing employees and lunchtime arrangements to demonstrate still broader flexibility.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A wide variety of sentence forms is used with excellent control, and the response is virtually error-free.
Continue refining stylistic concision in longer coordinated sentences while preserving the strong grammatical accuracy.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
You work for a large company. Your manager has asked staff for ideas about how to improve the staff canteen. Write a letter to your manager. In your letter:
- explain what problems the canteen has at the moment
- suggest two changes that would improve it
- say how staff would benefit from the changes
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.