You have an extra room in your apartment and would like to rent it out to a student. Write a letter to the newspaper to publish an advert. In your letter: - describe your apartment and the facilities available - what kind of tenant you would prefer - when you want the advertisement to be published and how you would pay the fee
Sample Response
Dear Sir or Madam, I am writing this letter to publish an advertisement in your newspaper to find a suitable student as a tenant for a single room in my 3 bedroom apartment. To describe the apartment a little, it is about 1100 square feet, located on the second floor at Hampshire resident, fully furnished and has a lot of open space around it. Out of the 3 rooms, two rooms are already occupied while the other room, which is around 330 square feet, is empty and can accommodate one person very easily. Besides, the apartment has all the modern amenities, including a satellite TV connectiona satellite cable line for TV, broadband internet connection and hot water. As for the tenant, I would prefer a tenant who isI would prefer him to be quiet, considerategentle and a non-smokernon-smoker. Besides, I also want him to be aware of personal hygiene who does not mind keeping the apartment reasonably clean and who can pay the rent on time. Anyway, now that you have all the necessary information for the advertisement, please arrange to publish it from the day after tomorrow, whichthe day after tomorrow which is the 9th of August, and stop running itend publishing it at the end of the month. I will transfer the publication fee electronically to your business account before 9th August. Yours faithfully, James Cover
Why this response received Band 7.0
The letter fulfils its advertising purpose well by giving detailed information about the apartment, the preferred tenant, the publication period, and payment, while maintaining an appropriately formal relationship with the newspaper. The main weakness is language control: several awkward collocations and faulty sentence structures reduce naturalness, and the one-paragraph presentation limits clarity; prioritise accurate sentence construction and functional paragraphing.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
All three bullet points are addressed directly and in sufficient detail, with a clear purpose and generally appropriate formal tone.
Refine the publication request by stating the exact start and end dates more directly and formally.
Coherence and Cohesion
The information follows a sensible sequence, but the entire letter is presented as one paragraph and some linking expressions are mechanical.
Use separate paragraphs for the property, tenant preferences, and publication and payment arrangements.
Lexical Resource
There is sufficient vocabulary to describe accommodation and advertising, but several choices such as "Hampshire resident" and "satellite cable line" are imprecise or unnatural.
Use accurate accommodation collocations, such as "Hampshire Residence" and "satellite television," and avoid conversational fillers such as "Anyway."
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The response attempts a range of complex structures, but agreement, article, coordination, and relative-clause errors occur noticeably while meaning remains clear.
Revise faulty structures such as "fully furnished and has" and "quiet, gentle and non-smoker" so parallel forms and articles are consistently accurate.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
You have an extra room in your apartment and would like to rent it out to a student. Write a letter to the newspaper to publish an advert. In your letter:
- describe your apartment and the facilities available
- what kind of tenant you would prefer
- when you want the advertisement to be published and how you would pay the fee
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.