You recently attended a series of English lessons in a language school. However, you were unhappy with the teaching quality. Write a letter to the director of the school. In your letter: - explain why you chose to study English at the school - describe the problems you had with the lessons - suggest how the classes could be improved
Sample Response
Dear Sir or Madam, I am writing to complain about the quality of the lessons I recently attended at your schoolquality of lessons that I experienced recently in your school, where I was enrolled from August 2020 to July 2021. I chose to attend your languagetraining school because I had heard from several of my friends that it was an affordable and reputable establishment, and indeed in the beginning it seemed quite worthwhile. However, during my time as a student thereover the time I was a student there I saw standards declinewitnessed standards sliding and eventually decided to leave because the teaching quality became so poor. It seemed to me that you had struggled to maintain a talented pool of staff during the Covid pandemic and this became evident whenthis was evident as, one by one, your best teachers left and were replaced by less capable teachersones with poor skills. These new teachers were not good at lesson planning and some of them did not even speak English very well. They were often impatient, disorganised, and appeared reluctant to come to the classroom each day. I hope you will soon be able to findI hope that one day you are able to find better teachers to replace the ones you lost and regain your reputation as a high-quality language school. You have already lost several eager students and you will continue to lose more unless you improve the quality of your teachingadapt and improve. Sincerely, David Wills
Why this response received Band 8.0
The letter presents a clear, appropriately formal complaint with specific, logically developed evidence about declining teaching standards. The proposed remedy is relevant but less fully developed than the explanation of the problems, and the single-block presentation reduces readability; the highest-priority improvement is to organise the three requested functions into distinct paragraphs and make the improvement request more concrete.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The purpose is immediately clear, all three bullet points are addressed, and the formal register remains appropriate throughout.
Develop the proposed improvements with concrete measures such as recruitment standards, teacher training, or lesson monitoring.
Coherence and Cohesion
The argument follows a clear sequence and uses referencing and linking effectively, although the response is presented as one dense block.
Divide the letter into purposeful paragraphs for the choice of school, teaching problems, and requested action.
Lexical Resource
The response uses a flexible and precise range of formal vocabulary, including effective language for describing declining standards.
Refine the few less natural choices, such as “over the time I was a student there,” for greater idiomatic precision.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Complex structures are varied and generally controlled, with only occasional minor errors in phrasing or punctuation.
Proofread long sentences for cleaner punctuation and more natural prepositional phrasing.
Write this task while it is fresh
Try the same task now. It helps you remember the feedback and write better next time.
IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
You recently attended a series of English lessons in a language school. However, you were unhappy with the teaching quality. Write a letter to the director of the school. In your letter:
- explain why you chose to study English at the school
- describe the problems you had with the lessons
- suggest how the classes could be improved
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.