Letter to a Friend's Sister About Studying Abroad

The younger sister of one of your friends is thinking about spending a year studying abroad as part of her university course. You did this recently, and she has asked you about your experience. Write a letter to your friend's sister. In your letter • tell her where you studied during your year abroad • describe what you learnt about the country you studied in • explain why your year abroad was helpful for your studies Dear .....................,

Annotated response

20 correction notes

Showing 20 correction notes.

Dear Jessica,

I hope you’re doing well. I’m writing to let you know about my . I was studying in 4 years. It was wonderful . is hot, rainy and sometimes windy. I love the weather .

I learned . I studied . about theory, I them. , so I had and cultures. We were going , too. We could experience .

It’s very . Now I have a job. But when I was worried . Fortunately, I got a job because . Especially, in Hongkong. You know, Hongkong is the middle of APAC.

I hope you . I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Best regards,

Yubin

Overall assessment

Why this response received Band 6.0

The letter has a friendly tone and gives a clear personal account of studying horology in Hong Kong. Its main task limitation is that employment benefits take the place of an explanation of benefits to the writer's studies, while the length of the stay differs from the prompt. Repeated grammar and spelling errors also interrupt the message.

IELTS criteria

How each score was decided

Task Achievement

6.0

The letter identifies Hong Kong as the study destination and gives some details about its weather and the course. However, career benefits replace a clear explanation of how the experience helped the writer's studies. The nearly four-year stay also conflicts with the one-year scenario in the prompt.

Coherence and Cohesion

6.0

The letter is organised into logical paragraphs that follow the bullet points, though progression relies on simple sequencing and some links between ideas are loosely connected.

Lexical Resource

6.0

The vocabulary is generally adequate for the topic, covering study, work and cultural points, but imprecise phrasing and spelling slips such as 'studdents' and 'oppurtunities' reduce accuracy.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy

5.5

A mix of simple and some complex structures appears, but frequent errors such as 'I was studying in Hongkong almost 4 years' and 'worried about get a job' sometimes impede smooth understanding.