Two common IELTS letter writing topics

For those of you preparing for the IELTS General Training test, it would be a good idea to become more familiar with the letter writing topics that you could get in IELTS Writing Task 1.

Looking at examples from published IELTS tests and from what our students have told us about their writing tests, two common IELTS letter writing topics are a letter of complaint about a product or service and a letter of invitation to a friend.

A letter of complaint

Here’s a sample task asking you to write a letter of complaint (taken from the Official IELTS Practice Materials):

You recently bought a large expensive item but when it was delivered to your home you found some problems with it.

Write a letter to the manager of the shop. In your letter

• give details of what you bought
• describe the problems with your item
• say what you want the shop to do

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Hi

Imagine it’s your IELTS test and you have to summarise the information in a graph for Academic Writing task 1. What information are you going to include? How are you going to organise the information you choose to write about?

For some practice, have a look at the graph below and think about how you would summarise the information. You can click on the image to see a larger version. Read the full post »

Hi

Reading about the world nuclear summit in the USA, I was reminded of the IELTS Writing task 2 question that I posted a few weeks ago on the benefits and disadvantages of nuclear technology.

Looking at the question again, I can see how difficult it would be to answer if you’re not familiar with this topic.

As it’s possible that you could get a similar question in your IELTS test, here’s a summary of the benefits and disadvantages.

The benefits:

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Hi

In IELTS Academic Writing task 1, how do you introduce the graph, chart, table or diagram?

Many of the IELTS candidates who I help use ‘The chart shows…‘ or  ‘The diagram illustrates…‘ but are often unsure about what information should come next.

Have a look at the following chart (which used to be on the official IELTS website), think about how you would introduce it, and then look at the example introductions below.

The graph below shows the different modes of transport used to travel to and from work in one European city in 1960, 1980 and 2000.

Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.

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Hi

In a recent IELTS seminar on how to write a better essay for your IELTS test, I got asked about how to answer a particular type of IELTS writing task 2 question.

The type of question the candidate was uncertain about is the one that asks ‘To what extent do you agree or disagree?‘.

I get asked this question a lot, and so I’d like to answer it here by looking at an example from the official IELTS website.

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