Your neighbours have recently written to you to complain about the noise from your houseflat. Write a letter to your neighbours. In your letter: - explain the reasons for the noise - apologise - describe what action you will take
Sample Response
Dear Mr and Mrs Smith, Earlier today, I received your complaint letter regarding the loud noisecommotions from my flat. It is a real shame that you had to be disturbed because I failed to warn yousuffer due to my oversight. I sincerely apologise for the incident and assure you that I will minimise any further disturbanceassure you that it will not happen again. Last Wednesday I hired a firm to redecorate my place. The decorators had to relocate all my furniture to complete their work. They also used some heavy machinery to complete the workcomplete their endeavour. That is why you have been hearing all this noisecatching all these loud noises. I understand that I owe you an apology as all this disturbanceall these ruckuses were caused by mecaused due to me and I should have informed you beforehand. Once again, I apologiseAnyway, I do apologize, and I would like to invite you for a cup of coffeeI will owe you a cup of coffee for this. I hope we will still be on friendly terms after this incident. To reduce the disturbanceAbout the sound problem, I have already asked the decoratorsinstructed the personnel to tone down the noise level, so your apartment should already be relatively silent. I hope this measure is enough to resolve the problemappease you. By the way, the work will be completed tomorrow. Thanks for your patience inon this matter. Please come by tomorrow evening and I will show you around my freshly revamped flat. Yours sincerelySincerely, Lisa Moon
Why this response received Band 7.0
The letter fully addresses the complaint with a clear explanation, sincere apology, and concrete action, while maintaining a friendly relationship with the neighbours. The main limitations are overstatement, a few awkward collocations, and an occasionally flippant or overly formal tone. Refine the register, organise the three purposes into paragraphs, and replace exaggerated vocabulary with natural neighbour-to-neighbour language.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
All three bullet points are fully developed, the purpose is immediately clear, and the friendly tone is generally appropriate, though a few phrases weaken the sincerity.
Keep the apology direct and respectful and remove wording that could sound dismissive or overly dramatic.
Coherence and Cohesion
The ideas follow a sensible order from apology to explanation and action, but the entire letter appears as one block and some conversational linkers are abrupt.
Use separate paragraphs for the opening apology, reasons, remedial action, and friendly close.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is varied and communicates precisely overall, but several words are unnecessarily dramatic or unnatural for noise from renovation.
Choose natural collocations such as noise, renovation work, hear, and caused by rather than inflated alternatives.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A broad range of sentence structures is used accurately, with only minor preposition, capitalisation, and punctuation issues.
Proofread fixed expressions, closing conventions, and sentence punctuation after the salutation.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
Your neighbours have recently written to you to complain about the noise from your houseflat. Write a letter to your neighbours. In your letter:
- explain the reasons for the noise
- apologise
- describe what action you will take
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.