Your friend has a travel company and would like you to come and work with him. Write a letter replying to your friend's offer. In your letter: - explain what you know about your friend's company - choose whether you accept or decline the offer - give reasons for your choice
Sample Response
Dear Miller, It is so great to hear from you after such a long time. I hope you are doing wellHope you are doing well with your work and family. Anyway, I am delighted and flattered thatflattered about the fact that you have actually thought of me as a possible colleagueprospective business partner of yours and invited me to work with you at your travel agency. By the way, I know that you workedhow you have worked for several travel companies before starting your own company at a small office about 5 years ago. Today, through your hard workwith your hard works, and with more than an annual turnover of more than US$500,000500,000 (in US dollars) yearly business turnover, your travel agency has managed to establish itself as one of the most successful small travel businessessuccessful small businesses and innovative entrepreneurs in our country. Besides, your customer retention rate is phenomenal, especially amongespecially, among the travellers who fly to EasternEast Europe. But, despite all this success of your business, I will have to turn down your offer to work with you as Deputy General Managerin the capacity of a Deputy General Manager of your company, primarily because I can’t leave my elderly parents on their own in my hometownall by themselves in my town. Besides, I like my current job. Hope you will understand. I hope we can meet soon and havespend a good time together. Warm wishes, Kyle
Why this response received Band 7.0
The letter responds fully and warmly to the offer, showing detailed knowledge of the company while making the decision and its reasons unmistakably clear. Its main limitation is that the lengthy company description relies on overloaded sentences and several unnatural, overly formal expressions; prioritise shorter, clearly separated paragraphs and more conversational wording so the refusal feels natural, balanced, and appropriately personal for a close friend.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The response fully addresses the friend's offer: it shows knowledge of the travel company, clearly declines the job, and gives relevant reasons. The friendly purpose is achieved well.
Balance the detailed praise of the company with a little more personal explanation of why your current responsibilities prevent you from accepting.
Coherence and Cohesion
The letter has a clear overall flow from greeting to company knowledge, decision, reasons, and closing. Some sentences are overloaded, and the long company-description section could be organised more cleanly.
Use paragraph breaks and shorter sentences to separate the company background from your decision.
Lexical Resource
There is a good range of vocabulary about business and travel, but several phrases are unnatural or too formal for a friend, such as "hard works" and "in the capacity of".
Choose conversational but accurate phrases, especially because the recipient is a friend.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Most grammar is controlled and meaning is clear. Errors are mainly with plural forms, articles, and phrase structure rather than sentence-level clarity.
Proofread noun forms and prepositions in business phrases before finalising the letter.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
Your friend has a travel company and would like you to come and work with him. Write a letter replying to your friend's offer. In your letter:
- explain what you know about your friend's company
- choose whether you accept or decline the offer
- give reasons for your choice
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.