You have recently stayed with an old friend for a few days after not seeing each other for a long time. Write a letter to this friend. In your letter: - say how you felt about the visit - refer to something enjoyable that you did while staying with him/her - invite your friend to visit you
Sample Response
Dear John, Hope you are doing great. Thank you for having me at your house last week and it was really great to meet you after such a long time.after a long. The experience was amazing and I had the time of my life when we visited different placeshopped to different places during my stayduring the time. I regret that it is over! I hope you will comeI am hoping you would come and stay at my house during your next vacation. As you know I am an ardent football fan and I still cannot get the wonderful memories of that football match that we enjoyed together at the Emirates Stadium out of my head. I still get chills downon my spine when I think about it. Remember those tantalizing final ten minutes of the game when Liverpool FC turned it around by scoring two late goals, and then the entire stadium went berserk with joy. I wish I had a video camera to capture those sensational moments! Anyway, would you fancy dropping by at my place on Sunday afternoon? I am having some high school friends over, and if you could come, that would be simply fantastic as the gathering will turn into our high school reunion. Also, I have not seen some of these guys in ages, so I am pretty sure this is going to be a great experience for all of us. I look forward to seeing you soon. Warm wishes, Sam
Why this response received Band 7.5
This is a lively, warmly pitched letter that fully covers the visit, a memorable shared activity, and a clear return invitation with convincing personal detail. The main weakness is polish: the one-block layout and a handful of unnatural expressions interrupt an otherwise fluent response. Organise the ideas into purposeful paragraphs and replace awkward phrases with more idiomatic wording while preserving the engaging tone.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
All three bullet points are directly and fully addressed in an appropriately warm, informal register with well-developed personal detail.
Refine the invitation by linking the proposed Sunday gathering even more explicitly to the requested return visit.
Coherence and Cohesion
The letter follows a clear progression from appreciation to the football memory and invitation, but the absence of paragraph breaks weakens organisation.
Use separate paragraphs for feelings about the stay, the memorable event, and the invitation.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is flexible and vivid, with expressions such as ardent football fan, tantalizing, and went berserk, though a few combinations are unnatural.
Replace phrases such as after a long and chills on my spine with natural alternatives such as after such a long time and chills down my spine.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A wide range of complex structures is used accurately, with only occasional awkward tense choices and minor punctuation issues.
Check past-time hypothetical forms and sentence boundaries to make the already varied grammar consistently precise.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
You have recently stayed with an old friend for a few days after not seeing each other for a long time. Write a letter to this friend. In your letter:
- say how you felt about the visit
- refer to something enjoyable that you did while staying with him/her
- invite your friend to visit you
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.