You have an extra room in your apartment and would like to rent it out to a student. Write a letter to the university council officer. In your letter: - describe your apartment and the facilities available - mention why you want to rent out the room - say what kind of tenant you would prefer
Sample Response
Dear Mr Hassan, I am writing with regard to your advertisement in the New York Times which stated that people should contact you to rent out rooms to students from your university. I would be grateful if you could help me find a tenantarrange a tenant for my extra room. I own a flat in Manhattan, and it is on 10th Avenueavenue. My flat is located on the 4th floor, and it is quite spacious. It contains 2 moderately large bedrooms, a storage room, a kitchen, and 2 bathrooms. In addition, it is fully furnished with high-quality furniturebranded furniture and household appliances. I live alone in this apartment and use one bedroom while I have no use for the second bedroomthe second bedroom has no use for me. This is why I have decided to rent it out to a studentlease it out to someone. The rent is $450 per month including utility bills. The tenant must be polite and a non-smokermust be a polite person and a non-smoker. Additionally, he should not have frequent guests or hold partiesfrequent guests and parties. I am sure the prospective student will feel comfortable in this accommodation. I look forward to hearing from you soon. Yours sincerelycordially, Fadi Al-Damiri
Why this response received Band 7.5
The letter communicates its purpose immediately and gives useful, specific details about the apartment, the reason for renting, and the preferred tenant. The main weakness is presentation as one continuous paragraph, compounded by a few unnatural expressions. Divide the letter into clear functional paragraphs and refine awkward collocations so that the strong content is easier to follow and sounds more natural.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The letter fully addresses the accommodation, motivation, and tenant preferences with a clear purpose, suitable formal tone, and relevant detail.
Clarify whether the requested tenant may be of any gender rather than shifting directly to the restrictive pronoun "he".
Coherence and Cohesion
The ideas follow a logical sequence, but presenting the entire letter as one block weakens paragraphing and makes the stages less easy to scan.
Use separate paragraphs for the request, apartment facilities, reason for renting, and preferred tenant.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is sufficiently varied and generally precise, although phrases such as "branded furniture" and "has no use for me" sound unnatural.
Replace awkward collocations with idiomatic alternatives such as "good-quality furniture" and "is currently unused".
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The response uses a varied range of complex and simple sentence forms with a high degree of grammatical accuracy.
Polish minor details such as capitalising "Tenth Avenue" and maintaining natural reference to a prospective tenant.
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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 university council officer. In your letter:
- describe your apartment and the facilities available
- mention why you want to rent out the room
- say what kind of tenant you would prefer
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.