You are unable to attend the farewell party for your manager at work. Write a letter to him/her. In your letter: - say why you can’t come - tell them what you valued about working for him/her - give him/her your best wishes.
Sample Response
Dear Mr Jones, Thank you for the invitation to your farewell eventleaving do on Saturday, 15 MaySaturday 15th May. Regrettably, I am unable to attend. DeleteUnfortunately, the date clashes with my wedding anniversary and my wife has already booked tickets for us to see a play at The Queen’s Theatre. I am disappointed that I shall miss this special event and not have the opportunity to celebrate your pending retirement with you. I would like to thank you for all the support you have given me over the years. You made me feel so welcome when I first joined the company as a shy and nervous twenty-year-old and have always helped me to recognise and develop my strengths. It is because of you that I have received several promotions in the past few years. I wish you a wonderful and well-deserved retirement. I hope your retirement includesI hope it includes many happy hours on the golf course and that you are able to go on the cruisetake the cruise that I know you have always wanted to. Yours sincerely, Jacky Spear
Why this response received Band 8.5
The letter's strongest feature is its complete, warmly personalized coverage of the reason for missing the party, the manager's positive influence, and suitable retirement wishes. Its main limitation is presentation: the response is delivered as one continuous block despite clear shifts in purpose. The highest-priority improvement is to separate the apology, appreciation, and good wishes into distinct paragraphs while retaining the natural formal tone.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The purpose is immediately clear, every bullet point is fully developed, and the respectful personal tone suits a letter to a manager.
Retain this level of specific personal detail while keeping every point directly relevant to the farewell and retirement.
Coherence and Cohesion
Ideas progress logically from the reason for declining to appreciation and good wishes, with cohesive links used naturally.
Use separate paragraphs for the apology, appreciation, and retirement wishes so the letter's functional stages are easier to scan.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is flexible, precise, and consistently appropriate, including natural phrases such as “well-deserved retirement” and “develop my strengths.”
Continue refining collocational precision in formal contexts so every expression remains as natural as the strongest phrases here.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A wide range of complex structures is used accurately and fluently, with strong control of agreement, tense, and punctuation.
Maintain this grammatical control while varying sentence openings slightly to give the prose even greater rhythmic flexibility.
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 are unable to attend the farewell party for your manager at work. Write a letter to him/her. In your letter:
- say why you can’t come
- tell them what you valued about working for him/her
- give him/her your best wishes.
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.