Your friend is celebrating her birthday and has invited you to a party. You cannot attend because you have an important meeting that day. Write a letter to your friend. In your letter: - thank him/her for the invitation - explain why you cannot come - propose meeting on another day
Sample Response
Dear Samantha, How lovely it is to receive your letter exactly when I was thinking of you. I am so happy that things are wonderful at your end. I am delightedoverwhelmed to be invited to your birthday party on 24 November 2025on the coming 24th November 2025. I wish you a happy birthday in advancewish you an advance happy birthday and thank you for inviting me. It means a lot to me. I sincerely wish to meet you at your birthday party to say happy birthday in person, but unfortunately, the date clashes with a scheduled board meetingthe date contradicts our board meeting schedule. It saddens me to say that I will not be able to make it as I will be at the meeting the whole day. This meeting is utterly important for all the staff and I cannot miss itthere is no way to skip it. I wish I truly could! I would, however, like to meet you sometime in December as I will visit your city thenduring this time. I will bring you a birthday present and I am sure we will enjoy our time together. With lots of love and best wishes for your birthday,With lots of love and best wishes for our lovely birthday girl. Sonia
Why this response received Band 7.5
The letter fully addresses the invitation, the unavoidable meeting, and a later reunion, while sustaining an affectionate and convincing tone throughout. Its main weakness is presentation and naturalness: the body is unbroken, and expressions such as 'the date contradicts our board meeting schedule' sound unnecessarily formal or imprecise for a close friend. Divide the message into purposeful paragraphs and favour simpler, more idiomatic wording.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
All three bullet points are fully covered with relevant detail, a clear purpose, and a consistently appropriate informal tone.
Make the proposed December meeting slightly more definite by suggesting a particular day or activity.
Coherence and Cohesion
The message follows a clear sequence from thanks to explanation and alternative plans, with effective linking despite being presented as one long paragraph.
Separate the thanks, reason for declining, and proposed reunion into short paragraphs to make the progression easier to scan.
Lexical Resource
There is a broad and effective vocabulary range, although a few collocations such as 'advance happy birthday' and 'the date contradicts our board meeting schedule' are unnatural.
Choose more idiomatic phrases, for example 'happy birthday in advance' and 'the party clashes with our board meeting.'
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The response uses varied simple and complex sentence forms with a high degree of accuracy and only minor non-impeding slips.
Refine small constructions such as 'on the coming 24th November' to the more natural 'on 24 November.'
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
Your friend is celebrating her birthday and has invited you to a party. You cannot attend because you have an important meeting that day. Write a letter to your friend. In your letter:
- thank him/her for the invitation
- explain why you cannot come
- propose meeting on another day
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.