You live in rented accommodation which was recently damaged due to the bad weather. Write a letter to the landlord. In your letter: - explain what caused the damage - why you need him/her to fix the problem right away - what needs to be done to fix it
Sample Response
Dear Mr Noah, I hope this letter finds you in good health and spiritsspirit. I am a tenant at your Yorkshire Apartment Residence, and I am writing this letterand writing this letter regardingwith regard to extensive damagedamages that were caused to my apartment last night because of a severebad storm. This bad storm, accompanied by a heavy downpourheavy downpour of rain continued for a long timea significant period of time and was strong enough to shatter the windowssmash the glass windows on the south side of my apartment. As a result, the cold wind has been entering my apartment continuously without any protection. In additionBesides, the broken tree branches from the large tree, next to my apartment, have fallen on the electricity line of my apartment, and it has been continuously disrupting the electricity connection to my house since last night. As you know that such electricity disturbances can damage some of the electrical appliances, which I use at my apartment, anytime. Therefore, I would like to request you to send a maintenance workersome maintenance or repair person to replace the smashed windows as soon as possible before my family freezes in the coldfreezes in cold. Please also contact the local electricity authority to move the broken branchestrees off the power lineelectricity connection line to my apartment. In case you need my assistance in any way, please just give me a call. Yours sincerely, Phil Lawrence
Why this response received Band 7.0
The letter communicates the urgent situation clearly, covers every requested point with relevant detail, and maintains an appropriately polite tone. Its main limitation is language control: several awkward collocations and grammatical slips reduce precision, while presenting the whole response as one block weakens readability. The highest-priority improvement is to organise the damage, urgency, and requested repairs into distinct paragraphs while tightening sentence structure and word choice.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The purpose is clear, all three bullet points are fully addressed, and the requested action is supported with specific reasons.
Make the requested repair arrangements even more precise by stating an expected visit time or asking the landlord to confirm one.
Coherence and Cohesion
The ideas progress logically from the storm damage to its consequences and the requested repairs, but the single-block presentation limits paragraph-level organisation.
Separate the description of the damage, the reasons for urgency, and the requested solutions into clear paragraphs.
Lexical Resource
A sufficiently wide vocabulary conveys the damage and urgency, although awkward combinations such as “extensive damages” and “freezes in cold” reduce naturalness.
Use more precise collocations, such as “extensive damage,” “power supply,” and “freezes from the cold.”
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The letter uses varied complex structures, but recurring article, clause, and punctuation errors sometimes make sentences cumbersome.
Proofread complex sentences for complete clause structure and remove unnecessary commas around essential information.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
You live in rented accommodation which was recently damaged due to the bad weather. Write a letter to the landlord. In your letter:
- explain what caused the damage
- why you need him/her to fix the problem right away
- what needs to be done to fix it
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.