You would like to buy some electrical goods at a shop in a nearby town. Write a letter to the shop. In your letter: - ask whether the shop has the goods or can order them - ask what the prices are - ask how long the shop can hold the goods for you
Sample Response
Dear Sir or Madam, I am writingwriting this letter to inquire about the availability of the electrical goods I wish to purchasesome goods that I need to purchase soon. I visited your store a few months agoI have visited your store a few months ago and was impressed with your product catalogue. I hope you will be ableI am hoping you would be able to supply these itemsthose products or order them for me from a supplierfrom another source. I need an LG microwave oven, a Breville Smart Toaster, a 42-inch Sony Smart TV42 inch Sony Smart TV and a fully automatic washing machine. Kindly let me know if you have these electricalelectronic appliances in stockready to be shipped. IfIn case, if you do not have some or all of these itemsany or all of these, would it be possible for you to order them on my behalf? I would really appreciate it if you couldcan recommend a good brand for the washing machine along with the prices and specifications of each itemthe price and specification of each item. Moreover, please inform me for how long you can hold those items for me as I will be out of town for a few days on a business trip. I would be much obliged if you couldcan hold these items untiltill the end of November. Expecting a reply from you soon. Yours faithfully, Mansoor Afzal
Why this response received Band 7.0
The letter fully covers availability, ordering, prices and the requested holding period in a courteous formal register, supported by a clear list of products and a practical reason for the delay. Its main limitation is grammatical consistency, especially tense and conditional forms, together with the dense single-paragraph presentation. Prioritise using past simple for the previous visit and polite could or would forms throughout, then paragraph the requests by purpose.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The purpose is immediately clear, every bullet point is fully covered, and the requested products and holding period are specified appropriately.
Clarify whether the goods should merely be reserved for collection or shipped, since both possibilities are currently implied.
Coherence and Cohesion
The requests progress logically from availability to ordering, pricing and reservation, although the response is presented as one long paragraph.
Group the opening and product list, the availability and price questions, and the holding request into three short paragraphs.
Lexical Resource
The vocabulary is appropriately formal and sufficiently varied, with a few imprecise phrases such as "ready to be shipped" and "price and specification."
Use precise retail language such as "in stock," "unit price," "specifications" and "reserve the items for collection."
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The response uses varied sentence forms, but tense and conditional errors recur alongside the fragment "Expecting a reply from you soon."
Write "I visited your store," use consistent polite forms such as "could" and "would," and close with the complete sentence "I look forward to your reply."
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
You would like to buy some electrical goods at a shop in a nearby town. Write a letter to the shop. In your letter:
- ask whether the shop has the goods or can order them
- ask what the prices are
- ask how long the shop can hold the goods for you
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.