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 Martin, I hopeDear Mr and Mrs Martin, Hope you are doing wellgreat. I am sorry to receiveextremely surprised to get a letter from you indicating that you are disturbedimmensely annoyed by the noise coming from my flatthe loud sound created in my house. Admittedly, I had no idea that the noise would reach your house at all. I am writing to apologise. Last Monday my kitchen windowone of my windows in the kitchen was broken whenas a cricket ball hit it directly while some children were playing in front of my flat. I tried to repairrefit the window in the evening after I got back from the office. It took me a long timeIt took me a long because I had no prior experiencesince I have no prior experience in this kind of repairthis type of work and I regret that I did not hire a professional. Unfortunately, I thought that the noisesound would not reach your home but it eventually did. Since you have suffered due to the noise, I sincerely apologise for this. Moreover, I promise I will be more careful about making noiseregarding this in the future. Once again, I am extremely sorry for any inconvenience I causedany inconvenience that might have happened due to my negligence. Yours sincerely, Nayan Moore
Why this response received Band 6.5
The letter clearly explains the source of the noise and offers a sincere apology in an appropriately courteous tone. However, the promised action is vague, and the single-block presentation weakens the organisation despite an otherwise logical sequence; several phrases also sound unnatural. The writer should specify a concrete preventive step, such as hiring a professional or restricting repairs to daytime hours, and organise the response into clear paragraphs.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The reason for the noise and the apology are clear, but the action to prevent another disturbance is only stated in general terms.
Describe one or two concrete actions, such as employing a professional and scheduling noisy work during agreed daytime hours.
Coherence and Cohesion
The account follows a logical sequence and uses cohesive links effectively, but presenting the whole letter as one block limits paragraphing.
Use separate paragraphs for the explanation, apology, and proposed action to make the progression more immediately visible.
Lexical Resource
There is sufficient range to communicate precisely, though several combinations are unnatural or imprecise, including “loud sound created” and “suffered due to the noise.”
Choose more idiomatic phrases such as “noise from the repairs” and “disturbance caused” while avoiding unnecessary intensifiers.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The response uses varied complex structures with generally strong control, despite a few local errors such as “It took me a long.”
Proofread for omitted words and revise incomplete time expressions, for example changing this to “It took me a long time.”
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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.