Writing
What separates a Band 5 letter from a Band 9 one. General Training only.
IELTS Task 1 band scores are decided by four criteria, and in the General Training letter the one that most often holds candidates back is not grammar. It is Task Achievement: whether all three bullet points were covered and whether the tone matched the reader.
That is worth knowing because it is the most fixable. A candidate whose English is at Band 7 can write a Band 6 letter simply by leaving one bullet point thinly covered.
Criterion by criterion
Four criteria, and what moves each one.
Did you cover all three bullets, use the right tone, and reach 150 words? Missing a bullet caps this criterion however well the letter is written.
Is there a clear paragraph for each bullet, in a sensible order, with a proper opening and closing? A letter written as one block loses here.
Range and precision. At Band 6 the vocabulary communicates; at Band 7 it is varied and used accurately, including the fixed phrases a letter needs.
Sentence variety and error frequency. Punctuation is marked here too, so comma splices and missing apostrophes count against this criterion.
All the English is fine, but one bullet gets a single sentence and the register drifts from formal to casual halfway through.
No paragraphing, a greeting that does not match the sign-off, and the purpose of the letter unclear until the second half.
Method
Six changes, in order of how much difference they make.
The single highest-value change. It fixes Coherence directly and makes it obvious to the examiner that Task Achievement is complete.
Decide formal, semi-formal or informal before writing, then check for contractions and casual phrasing that slip in later.
I am writing to. A letter that reaches its point in paragraph two loses marks it never needed to lose.
One sentence per bullet is coverage, not development. Add the circumstance, the effect or the specific date.
Three or four sentences of the same shape reads as Band 5 even when every one is correct. Combine some with relative clauses.
Yours faithfully after Dear Sir or Madam, Yours sincerely after a name. One of the easiest marks in the paper.
Practice
Choose the version that would score higher.
You recently stayed in a hotel and were unhappy with the service. Write to the manager. Say what the problem was, explain what happened, and say what you would like the manager to do.
Three bullets, so three body paragraphs. You do not know the manager, so the register is formal.
1Which opening scores higher?
B. Formal register, purpose in the first sentence, and a specific detail. A uses an informal greeting and a contraction in a letter to a stranger.
2The task has three bullets. How many body paragraphs?
Three. One per bullet. It is the single highest-value structural change in Task 1 and it makes complete coverage visible to the examiner.
3Which covers a bullet better?
B. A is coverage; B is development. Task Achievement assesses whether the point was developed, not only whether it was mentioned.
4You opened Dear Sir or Madam. Which closing is correct?
Yours faithfully. No name in the greeting means faithfully in the close, and the mismatch is immediately visible.
5Which criterion most often caps a Task 1 letter at Band 6?
Task Achievement. Usually because one bullet was covered in a single sentence, or the register drifted. Both are fixable without improving your English at all.
Coverage and development are different things, and the gap between them is one of the hardest distinctions to see in your own writing.
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Structure and register you can check against a rule. Whether each bullet is developed enough is a judgement.
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Against four criteria: Task Achievement, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy. Task 1 counts for a third of your writing band, and Task 2 for two thirds.
Task Achievement is capped, regardless of how good the rest of the letter is. Each of the three bullets needs its own paragraph.
Yes. Tone is assessed under Task Achievement, so a letter with accurate English in the wrong register can still score Band 6.
Yes. Task 1 is a third of the writing band and Task 2 is two thirds, which is why Task 1 should take about twenty minutes and Task 2 about forty.
No. The Task 1 letter is General Training only. Academic Task 1 asks you to describe a chart, graph, table, map or process.
Nineteen real candidate answers from Band 5 to Band 8 across both modules.
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Grammar mistakes you can look up. Whether you developed a bullet enough, or held the register for 150 words, has to be judged against the criteria.
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