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

18 correction notes

Showing 18 correction notes.

Dear Jennifer,

Hope you’re doing well. I’m writing regarding your question about my recent a year as part of my education.

As you may know, I went to California University in Irvine. , I joined a group of researchers who are working on the same topic as my thesis.

so many new things . For example, they are not as multi-cultural as we are in Canada, and in some cases, I some racism. And I think it’s that you . Furthermore, that that might be helpful, as you don’t need to learn new things.

, for me as I needed to work on campus layouts for my case study, and as I was there, to archives and all the resources.

Let me know if you have be more than happy to be helpful.

Regards,

Atousa

Overall assessment

Why this response received Band 6.5

The letter's strongest aspect is its complete coverage of all three bullet points with a friendly, appropriate tone and a clear personal voice. The main limitation is recurring grammatical and lexical inaccuracy, such as 'I was witness of some racism' and 'I'd an access', alongside occasionally mechanical linking that slows the flow.

IELTS criteria

How each score was decided

Task Achievement

7.0

The letter achieves its purpose, covers all three bullet points from the prompt with relevant detail about the study location, cultural observations, and academic benefits, and maintains a suitable friendly register.

Coherence and Cohesion

6.5

Ideas are organised into clear paragraphs with a generally logical progression, though some linking is mechanical or imprecise, such as using 'Totally' to introduce the explanation bullet.

Lexical Resource

6.5

Vocabulary is adequate for the task with some attempts at less common items like 'multi-cultural', 'archives', and 'campus layouts', but errors such as 'witness of', 'I'd an access', and 'have any another questions' reduce precision.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy

6.0

The letter combines simple and complex sentences, including an accurate relative clause in 'researchers who are working'. Accuracy is reduced by missing articles in 'I went to United States', the missing infinitive marker in 'you have consider', and the incorrect determiner combination 'any another questions'.