You have recently heard that a friend of yours has had some problems as a result of some unusual weather. Write a letter to your friend. In your letter: - express your concern (i.e. - say you are sorry to hear what has happened) - tell him/her about a similar experience that you once had - give some advice, or - offer help
Sample Response
Dear Rachel, I was shocked to hearI'm horrified to learn from your letter about the storm that hit your city recently. I'm so sorry that it even damaged your house. How awful to come home from a holiday with your child to find your house damagedfind the damaged house! I wish it had never happenedI wish it did never happen. I understand how you must feel, as I had a similar experience a few years ago when a sudden storm hit our city. I came home from a trip to find that the windows of the house were broken and rainwaterthe rainwater had damaged my floor and carpetdamaged my floor and the carpet. It was very upsetting and I had to spend a large sum of money to replace the window panesglasses and to buy a new carpet. If I can do anything for you, I’dIf I can do anything for you I’d be happy to help. I can come over at the weekendcome over the weekend and help you in any way possible. Please don't be upset about what happenedby the event as you could not have done anything about ityou had nothing to do about it. It would be better to concentrateBetter concentrate on getting the insurance money and redecoratingredecorate the house. See you soon. Take care. Best wishes, Sophia
Why this response received Band 7.0
The letter responds warmly and fully, combining sympathy with a relevant personal experience, practical advice, and a concrete offer of help. Its main limitation is that the single-block presentation and several tense, article, and phrasing errors occasionally weaken the otherwise natural, supportive tone. Prioritise organising the response into short purposeful paragraphs, then proofread emotional and advisory sentences for more tactful, grammatically controlled wording.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The letter expresses concern, gives sympathy, describes a similar storm experience, and offers both advice and help. The task is fully covered and the tone is friendly.
Keep the warm support, but make the advice more tactful and polish grammar in the emotional opening.
Coherence and Cohesion
The response is easy to follow, moving from sympathy to similar experience and then help. It would benefit from paragraph breaks and slightly smoother transitions.
Separate the sympathy, similar experience, and advice or help into short paragraphs.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is expressive and mostly natural, with useful words such as storm, damaged, upsetting, insurance, and redecorate. Some phrases are too strong or unnatural.
Use caring but natural expressions such as I was shocked to hear, I wish it had never happened, and focus on your insurance claim.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Meaning is clear, but there are errors in perfect tense, articles, modal wording, and parallel verb forms.
Check past wishes, articles before house, and parallel verbs after advice phrases.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
You have recently heard that a friend of yours has had some problems as a result of some unusual weather. Write a letter to your friend. In your letter:
- express your concern (i.e.
- say you are sorry to hear what has happened)
- tell him/her about a similar experience that you once had
- give some advice, or
- offer help
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.