IELTS General Training Writing Task 1: How to Write a Letter That Gets You Band 7

If you’re taking IELTS General Training rather than Academic, your Writing Task 1 is a completely different animal from the graph-description task. Instead of analysing data, you’re writing a letter — and letters are judged on things graphs never are: tone, purpose, and whether your sign-off actually matches your greeting.

It’s a task you can genuinely master with practice, because unlike Task 2’s essay, the structure barely changes from prompt to prompt. Here’s exactly how to approach it.

What the examiner is actually checking

Four things, and all four carry real marks:

1. Did you state a clear purpose for writing?
2. Is the tone appropriate for who you’re writing to?
3. Did you cover every bullet point in the prompt — and develop them, not just mention them?
4. Is it in a recognisable letter format, with a greeting and sign-off that match?

Miss any one of these and your score caps out, no matter how good your grammar is. So before you write a single sentence, work out who you’re writing to.

Step 1: Identify the tone from the prompt

Every GT Task 1 prompt tells you, directly or indirectly, who the letter is for. That decides your tone:

• Formal — someone you don’t know, in an official capacity: a landlord, a company, a local council. Greeting: “Dear Sir/Madam” or “Dear Mr Smith.” Sign-off: “Yours faithfully” (if you don’t know their name) or “Yours sincerely” (if you do).
• Semi-formal — someone you have a professional relationship with but know a little: a manager, a neighbour, a teacher. Slightly warmer language, still polite. Sign-off: “Yours sincerely” or “Best regards.”
• Informal — a friend or family member. Contractions, casual phrases, first names. Greeting: “Dear Anna” or “Hi Tom.” Sign-off: “Best wishes,” “Love,” or “Take care.”

Get this wrong — writing “Dear Sir/Madam” to your old university friend, or opening with “Hey!” to a hotel manager — and the examiner will mark it down even if every sentence is grammatically perfect.

Step 2: Use the same structure every time

GT Task 1 almost always gives you three bullet points to cover. This structure handles all of them:

1. Paragraph 1: One or two sentences stating why you’re writing.
2. Paragraph 2: Bullet point one, developed with a detail or example — not just restated.
3. Paragraph 3: Bullet point two, same treatment.
4. Paragraph 4: Bullet point three, plus a closing line (something like “I look forward to hearing from you” for formal letters, or “Let me know what you think!” for informal ones).

That’s it — five short paragraphs including the sign-off, written to a template you can reuse for any prompt.