You are going to study at a college in the UK next year. You would like to stay in the college Hall of Residence. Write a letter to the college. In your letter: - outline what your room needs are - outline what your food needs are - ask what alternatives are available if the college cannot provide what you want
Sample Response
Dear Sir or Madam, I have recently enrolled atin your college and my course will beginmy class will commence at the beginning of next year. I am writing to request that you arrangerequest you to arrange my accommodation in the college hall of residenceaccommodation in the college hostel or suggest an alternative. My major is Economics'Economics' and my courseclass will start in August 2025. I will travel from Japan would prefer to stay in the college residence hall. I would like a single room either on the second or third floor with air conditioningwith the air-conditioner and laundry facilities. My first preference is to stay at the college hostel. I am a vegetarian and would like to know if theour college canteen is vegetarian-friendly. If this is not included in the dining room, would you please inform me if I can avail myself vegetarian diets from a nearby restaurant? If so, how far away are those restaurants?how far those restaurants are? If no suitable room is available in the college hall, would you please suggest a suitable placesuggest to me a suitable place to stay in the vicinity of the college? I can share athe room with another student and would be ready to pay morehigher, but air conditioningbut the air-conditioner, vegetarian-friendly meals and laundry service are essential requirementsare indispensable as they are the foremost factors I am considering now. Looking forward to getting a reply from you. Yours faithfully, Johnny Quan
Why this response received Band 6.5
The letter addresses every requirement with useful specificity about the room, vegetarian food, and possible alternatives, and its requests remain appropriately courteous. Its main weaknesses are the unbroken block of text and frequent grammatical or collocational problems, including a fused sentence and malformed indirect questions. The priority is to divide the content by bullet point and edit each request into accurate formal English.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
All three bullet points are covered in detail, the accommodation purpose is clear, and the tone is suitably polite despite some unnecessary repetition.
Remove repeated preference statements and present the acceptable shared-room alternative more directly alongside the essential facilities.
Coherence and Cohesion
The content follows a broadly logical order from room needs to food needs and alternatives, but the absence of paragraphing makes the letter dense and less easy to navigate.
Use separate paragraphs for the opening purpose, room requirements, dietary requirements, alternatives, and closing.
Lexical Resource
The response has enough range for accommodation and dietary requests, but several combinations such as ‘avail myself vegetarian diets’ and ‘pay higher’ are inaccurate.
Use natural request language such as ‘obtain vegetarian meals’, ‘pay a higher rent’, and ‘air conditioning’.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Both simple and complex forms are attempted, but sentence-boundary, article, preposition, and question-formation errors recur while meaning remains generally clear.
Correct the fused sentence after ‘Japan’ and use proper indirect-question order, such as ‘how far the restaurants are’.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
You are going to study at a college in the UK next year. You would like to stay in the college Hall of Residence. Write a letter to the college. In your letter:
- outline what your room needs are
- outline what your food needs are
- ask what alternatives are available if the college cannot provide what you want
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.