Uploaded May 2017 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
I've trained thousands of students for success on their IELTS exam by using these 14 tips! Now it's your turn. You'll learn what you MUST do to get the highest score on your IELTS General Writing Task 1. Find out how to easily identify the type and purpose of each letter, and how to start and end your letter perfectly. Learn to save time and effort by using standard expressions. Understand the scoring criteria, so you know exactly what to do and what NOT to do. Visit GoodLuckIELTS.com for a free guide to the IELTS, and download my free resource at engvid.com/ielts-general-task-1-letter-writing with sample letters, sample topics, key expressions, tips, and much more. Good luck!
Take the quiz on this lesson: engvid.com/ielts-general-writing-task-1
TRANSCRIPT
Hi. I'm Rebecca from engVid. If you need to do the IELTS general exam, I'm sure it's for a very important reason. Perhaps you're trying to immigrate to another country, or get admission to a college program, or join a professional training program. Whatever your reason, I know you want to get the highest marks possible. Right? Of course. So I'm going to help you to do exactly that in one particular area of the exam, and that's in your writing section. Now, in the writing section there are two parts, one is a letter and one is an essay. In this lesson we will focus on how you can get the highest marks possible in the letter-writing section. Okay? The 14 tips that I'm going to give you I promise you, if you apply each one of these things, step by step you're going to get more and more marks. Okay? So stick with me and we will go through them. Let's get started.
So, the first thing you have to identify when you read the letter-writing task is: What type of letter am I being asked to write? Is it a formal letter, is it a semi-formal letter, or is it an informal letter? Well, how do you know that? Well, you can know it in a few ways and I'm going to explain them, but one of the ways that you can know it is to look at the second point that you need to understand, is to identify the purpose of the letter because some purposes are more formal than other purposes. All right? For example, some formal letters might ask you to request information; or apply for a job; or complain about a product or a service, maybe to an airline, maybe to a store, something like that; or to make a suggestion or a recommendation. All right? To a shopping mall, to a restaurant, something like that. These are more formal situations. These are when we are writing to people or companies that we don't know. All right? That's the clue: You don't have anybody's name, you just have the name of the company.
All right. Semi-formal letters might include things like this: Complaining to a landlord; or explaining something, a problem or a situation to a neighbour; or asking a professor for permission to miss an exam or to submit your assignment late. Whatever it is. Okay? The details vary. Doesn't matter. And here, what's...? What identifies the semi-formal? The semi-formal we know it's still a kind of a formal situation, but here we usually do know somebody's name. You would know the name of your landlord, or your professor, or your neighbour, for example. Right? So that means something in terms of the way that you write the letter, the language, the tone, the style. All of this is affected by whether it's formal, semi-formal, or informal. And I'll explain more to you as we go along.
Now, examples of informal letters might be where you're being asked to invite a friend, or thank a friend, or apologize to a friend, or ask for advice from someone that you know. Okay? Here what's important is that you really know this person well and you're probably going to call them by first name. So I'm going to explain exactly how all of this translates into the next step, which is how you begin your letter.
So the first step was to identify the type of letter. Second step, the purpose. Now the third step is to open and close the letter correctly. Once you've done steps one and two, you will know how to do this step. Because if it's a formal letter then you start with: "Dear Sir" or "Madam", and you end with: "Yours faithfully". Okay? That's how it is. If it's a semi-formal letter, you will start with something like: "Dear Mr. Brown" or "Dear Ms. Stone" or "Mrs. Stone". "Ms." Is when you don't know if a woman is married or not, or if she's just a modern woman. And you end the semi-formal letter with something like: "Yours sincerely". Okay? What we're trying to do is to match up the formality of the situation with these terms that we're using. Okay? The opening and closing salutations they're called, these are called. All right? Next is the informal one.
I've trained thousands of students for success on their IELTS exam by using these 14 tips! Now it's your turn. You'll learn what you MUST do to get the highest score on your IELTS General Writing Task 1. Find out how to easily identify the type and purpose of each letter, and how to start and end your letter perfectly. Learn to save time and effort by using standard expressions. Understand the scoring criteria, so you know exactly what to do and what NOT to do. Visit GoodLuckIELTS.com for a free guide to the IELTS, and download my free resource at engvid.com/ielts-general-task-1-letter-writing with sample letters, sample topics, key expressions, tips, and much more. Good luck!
Take the quiz on this lesson: engvid.com/ielts-general-writing-task-1
TRANSCRIPT
Hi. I'm Rebecca from engVid. If you need to do the IELTS general exam, I'm sure it's for a very important reason. Perhaps you're trying to immigrate to another country, or get admission to a college program, or join a professional training program. Whatever your reason, I know you want to get the highest marks possible. Right? Of course. So I'm going to help you to do exactly that in one particular area of the exam, and that's in your writing section. Now, in the writing section there are two parts, one is a letter and one is an essay. In this lesson we will focus on how you can get the highest marks possible in the letter-writing section. Okay? The 14 tips that I'm going to give you I promise you, if you apply each one of these things, step by step you're going to get more and more marks. Okay? So stick with me and we will go through them. Let's get started.
So, the first thing you have to identify when you read the letter-writing task is: What type of letter am I being asked to write? Is it a formal letter, is it a semi-formal letter, or is it an informal letter? Well, how do you know that? Well, you can know it in a few ways and I'm going to explain them, but one of the ways that you can know it is to look at the second point that you need to understand, is to identify the purpose of the letter because some purposes are more formal than other purposes. All right? For example, some formal letters might ask you to request information; or apply for a job; or complain about a product or a service, maybe to an airline, maybe to a store, something like that; or to make a suggestion or a recommendation. All right? To a shopping mall, to a restaurant, something like that. These are more formal situations. These are when we are writing to people or companies that we don't know. All right? That's the clue: You don't have anybody's name, you just have the name of the company.
All right. Semi-formal letters might include things like this: Complaining to a landlord; or explaining something, a problem or a situation to a neighbour; or asking a professor for permission to miss an exam or to submit your assignment late. Whatever it is. Okay? The details vary. Doesn't matter. And here, what's...? What identifies the semi-formal? The semi-formal we know it's still a kind of a formal situation, but here we usually do know somebody's name. You would know the name of your landlord, or your professor, or your neighbour, for example. Right? So that means something in terms of the way that you write the letter, the language, the tone, the style. All of this is affected by whether it's formal, semi-formal, or informal. And I'll explain more to you as we go along.
Now, examples of informal letters might be where you're being asked to invite a friend, or thank a friend, or apologize to a friend, or ask for advice from someone that you know. Okay? Here what's important is that you really know this person well and you're probably going to call them by first name. So I'm going to explain exactly how all of this translates into the next step, which is how you begin your letter.
So the first step was to identify the type of letter. Second step, the purpose. Now the third step is to open and close the letter correctly. Once you've done steps one and two, you will know how to do this step. Because if it's a formal letter then you start with: "Dear Sir" or "Madam", and you end with: "Yours faithfully". Okay? That's how it is. If it's a semi-formal letter, you will start with something like: "Dear Mr. Brown" or "Dear Ms. Stone" or "Mrs. Stone". "Ms." Is when you don't know if a woman is married or not, or if she's just a modern woman. And you end the semi-formal letter with something like: "Yours sincerely". Okay? What we're trying to do is to match up the formality of the situation with these terms that we're using. Okay? The opening and closing salutations they're called, these are called. All right? Next is the informal one.
