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IELTS Writing Task 1 (Letter ) General

             


IELTS Writing Task 1 (Letter ) 

 Tips of Writing a Letter (red colour shows correct answer)

1. You are writing a letter to the headteacher of a school or college, but you don't know their name. How do you begin your letter?
A. Dear headteacher.
B. Dear Sir / Madam.
C. Dear Sir.

2. You have received a letter from the manager of a company which buys computer components from your company, and you are now replying. What do you say?
A. Thank you for your letter.
B. Thanks a lot for your letter.
C. It was great to hear from you.

3. You recently stayed in a hotel and were very unhappy with the service you received. You are now writing to the manager. What do you say?
A. I had a horrible time at your hotel recently.
B. I would like to say that I am unhappy about your hotel.
C. I would like to complain about the service I received at your hotel recently.

4. You have sent a letter of application to a college, together with your curriculum vitae which the college requested. What do you say in the letter to explain that your curriculum vitae is attached?
A. You asked for my curriculum vitae, so here it is.
B. As you can see, I've enclosed my curriculum vitae.
C. As you requested, I enclose my curriculum vitae.

5. You have applied for a job, but you would like the company to send you more information. What do you say?
A. I would be grateful if you would send me more information.
B. I want you to send me more information.
C. Send me some more information, if you don't mind.

6. In a letter you have written to a company, you tell them that you expect them to reply. What do you say?
A. Write back to me soon, please.
B. Please drop me a line soon.
C. l look forward to hearing from you soon.

7. In a letter you have written, you want the recipient to do something and are thanking them in advance of their action. What do you say?
A. Thank you for your attention in this matter.
B. Thanks for doing something about it.
C. I am gratified that you will take appropriate action.

8. The company you work for has received an order from another company and you are writing to them to acknowledge the order and let them know when you can deliver. What do you say?
A. About the order you sent on 12 January for...
B. I would like to remind you of the order you sent on 12 January for...
C. refer to your order of 12 January.

9. In a letter, you explain that the recipient can contact you if they want more information. What do you say?
A. Give me a call if you want some more information.
B. If you would like any more information, please do not hesitate to contact me.
C. If you would like any more information, why not get in touch?

10. You began a letter with the recipient's name (e.g., Dear Mr. Perrin). How do you end the letter?
A. Yours faithfully.
B. Yours sincerely.
C. Best wishes.

11. You did not begin the letter with the recipient's name (see number 1 above). How do you end the letter?
A. Yours faithfully.
B. Yours sincerely.
C. Best wishes.

  
Writing a letter(task-1)

1. Answering the question.

As I said above, task fulfillment (answering the question) is one third of your total mark and it is an area in which everyone should do well. This is often, however, not the case.
What you must do is to write a letter, which would fully answer the needs of the problem in a real life situation. Even if you have covered all that the question itself asks, have you included everything in the letter needed to realistically perform its function. For example, a question I have seen somewhere gives the candidate the following task:
You have some library books that you are unable to return as a member of your family in another city has fallen sick and you have had to go and look after them.
Write a letter to the library explaining the situation. Apologize for the inconvenience called and say what you are going to do.
You should write at least 150 words.
This seems a fairly typical IELTS General Training  Task 1 writing question.  Answering the question in a way that will get you a good Task Fulfilment grade needs a number of things for you to do.

a) Write at least 150 words.

Writing less does not answer the question, which tells you to write at least 150 words. If you write less than 150 words, the examiner marking your paper will give you a maximum of 5 for Task Fulfilment or even less.

b) Fully do all the things that the question asks you.

In this case it asks you to do 3 main things:
1.   explain the situation
2.   apologize for the inconvenience
3.   say what you are going to do

The important part is to fully do these things. Don't take 1 line to explain about your relative - people who do this often don't make the 150 word limit. Enlarge on what the question tells you. Use your imagination. It must be something fairly serious to make you leave town and you must be the only one possible to look after the relative so go into these things. Be realistic as well.
You're writing to a library and you won't make it too personal. Apologizing won't take up much space but you can still devote a couple of sentences to it. Saying what you are going to do should be a full explanation as well.
 
c) Make your letter realistic so it would function in a real life situation.

This involves adding other things to the letter, which it may not ask you for, but without which your letter would not perform its function. For this question, it would mean introducing yourself by name, giving your library card membership number, telling the library the titles of the books that you have borrowed, the names of their authors, their library reference numbers, when you borrowed them and when they were due back.
Finally, in this question, the situation might involve you getting a fine for the late books so you could ask politely for that to be cancelled due to the circumstances. Without this information, the letter wouldn't help the library much in real life and, even though the question doesn't ask you specifically to include it, the examiner reading your work will be looking for such things. These are things that are needed to get a 9 for task fulfilment and, theoretically, anyone, whatever their level of English, should be able to get a good mark here.
 
2.The Opening Greeting of the Letter

Your letter will probably need to be a reasonably informal letter to a friend or a semi-formal letter. The opening of your letter should reflect which one you are writing.
A friendly letter will open with Dear followed by a name which should then be followed by a comma, eg:

Dear John,

A semi-formal letter will also open with Dear and then be followed by a name, (if you decide that in the situation you would know the name) or by Sir (if it's a man), Madam (if it's a woman) or

Sir/Madam if you don't know, eg:

Dear Mr. Phillips,
Dear Mrs. Phillips,
Dear Sir,
Dear Madam,
Dear Sir/Madam,
The question also might specify how you are to begin so follow what it says.

3. The Opening Paragraph of the Letter

In a semi-formal letter, I feel it is important to state the reason for the letter straight away. You could use the following to help you:
I am writing to ask/ tell//inform you that...
I am writing to ask/inquire...
I am writing with regard to...
I am writing with reference to...
I am writing in connection with...
I am writing in response to...
In reply to your letter, I am writing to... (if the question indicates that you
have had a letter)

If the letter is a less formal one to a friend then you should open the letter in a friendlier way. EG:

Dear John,

Hi there! It's been so long since I've heard from you. I hope you are doing well and I hope all you family are doing fine. I'm pretty good in spite of working hard. Anyway, the reason I'm writing is...

4. The Substance of the Letter

I've already gone into detail about answering the question fully and using your imagination to produce a realistic letter fulfilling all functions so I won't repeat that. Through great experience with IELTS, I can say that questions tend to ask you to do certain things. Here I will give you some ideas about some language to use in the substance of the letter which will help you to answer the task well.

Asking for Help
I would like you to...
I would be grateful if you could...
I need to ask your advice about...
I'd like to ask for information about...
What I'm looking for is...
Complaining
I'm writing to express my dissatisfaction/annoyance/ about...
I'm writing to express my anger at...
I am not happy about...
... is not what I expected/was expecting.

I want to know what you are going to do about this situation.
NB When complaining, don't get too angry. I've had students who really became too heated in their complaints. In a polite semi-formal letter, this should not happen. Also, do not over-exaggerate. If it's a reasonably small and understandable problem, do say that you're not satisfied but show that you understand and stay calm in your expressions.

Thanking

I'm very grateful for...
I'd like to thank you very much for...
I very much appreciated...
Apologizing
I'm very sorry that/about...
Please forgive me for...
I'd like to apologize about...
Please accept my apologies

5.Ending your Letter

First of all, in English we often end letters before the sign off with certain phrases. These can be included in most letters and will make your letter seem realistic and polished. For a formal letter, you could use:
If you require any further information, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thanking you in advance for your help, I look forward to hearing from you soon.
For a more informal letter you could use:
If you need to know anything else, just get in touch with me as soon as you can. Thanks a lot for your help and I hope to hear from you soon.
Be careful though! IELTS examiners quite rightly look for writing that has been memorised and just repeated so, if you use expressions like the ones above, make sure that they fit in with the rest of your letter.
Finally you'll need to sign off your letter. For a formal letter use:

Yours faithfully, OR

Yours sincerely,

Remember the commas (it makes a good impression on the examiner if you use good punctuation) and spell "sincerely"  correctly (a lot of people don't!).
For an informal letter, love is not always appropriate though English speakers use it a lot. Better would be to use:

Regards,


Yours,

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