A friend has written to you asking for advice about a problem at work. You have had a similar problem in the past. Write a letter to your friend. In your letter: - tell your friend you understand the problem - explain what happened to you in the past - suggest possible solutions to the problem
Sample Response
Hey Joe, I was sorry to hear that you aren’t getting along with people in your new jobgetting along in your new job. I understand what you’re going through. When I started my jobBack when I started at my job, I experienced the same thing. Let me tell you a little about it. When I first started working at the hotel, I really struggled to get along with my co-workers. They all seemed to form little cliquesgather in little cliques and it was hard to communicate with them because they didn’t seem interested in talking to me. I might have ignored itI wouldn’t have minded, but it was affecting my work and, as the new guy, I was afraid I’d get fired. In the end, I made sure that my work ethic was impeccable so that no oneand so no one could complain about me. Then, I made more of an effortmade greater efforts to reach out to my co-workers. I asked them questions to make them feel appreciated and spent some time with one or two of them outside of work to build social connectionsbuild a social connection. Perhaps these things can help you, too. I really hope so. Let me know how it goes. Best, DavidDavid
Why this response received Band 8.0
The letter fully addresses the friend's situation with a warm, natural tone, a clearly explained parallel experience, and practical advice supported by relevant detail. Its main limitation is presentation as one continuous block, which weakens the visible structure despite strong logical flow. The highest-priority improvement is to separate the experience and recommendations into distinct paragraphs so the progression is immediately clear.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The letter achieves its purpose convincingly by expressing understanding, describing a closely relevant workplace problem, and offering practical solutions in an appropriate friendly tone.
Make the advice even more directly actionable by explicitly linking each suggested step to the friend's stated difficulty.
Coherence and Cohesion
The ideas progress logically from empathy through personal experience to advice, with cohesive links that make the message easy to follow.
Divide the continuous block into clear paragraphs for the opening, past experience, and recommended solutions.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is varied, precise, and natural, with effective choices such as “cliques,” “work ethic,” and “social connection.”
Refine the slightly awkward conditional phrasing around not minding the situation to make the intended meaning fully exact.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A wide range of simple and complex sentence forms is used accurately, with strong control of clauses, punctuation, and tense.
Continue refining the few longer sentences so every relationship between clauses is expressed with maximum precision.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
A friend has written to you asking for advice about a problem at work. You have had a similar problem in the past. Write a letter to your friend. In your letter:
- tell your friend you understand the problem
- explain what happened to you in the past
- suggest possible solutions to the problem
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.