Narration:

‘Register’ refers to the style of language that you use depending on the situation and who you are communicating with. In Task 1 of the IELTS General Training writing test, your register should relate to who you are writing your letter to. As you saw in the previous exercise, this can be divided into informal, semi formal or formal language. You would use informal language to write to someone you know personally and are writing to informally. You would use semi formal language to someone you know but not well and who you are writing to for a formal reason. Your language should be formal to someone you do not know or is considered superior when writing for a formal or official reason. You can show that you have a good command of English by writing in the correct register during the IELTS test. In this lesson we will look at choosing the correct register depending on the type of letter you have to write and the type of person the instructions tell you that you should write to.