Sample response & feedback

Letter to Landlord Requesting Apartment Lease Extension

Question

Five months ago, you started renting an apartment on a six-month agreement. You now wish to stay in the apartment for longer than the six months you originally agreed with the owner. Write a letter to the owner of your apartment. In your letter: Say how long you now want to rent the apartment for Explain why your plans have changed Tell the owner about a problem in the apartment Dear ...,

Annotated response

10 correction notes

Showing 10 correction notes.

Dear Mr Giovanni,

I hope this letter finds you in . I am writing to discuss the possibility of extending my rental agreement for the apartment I have been for the past five months. Initially, I had planned to rent the apartment for only six months, but I would now like to extend my stay for an additional year, if possible.

The reason for this change is that my studies here in Turin have been extended due to additional coursework and a research opportunity that . Since I have already the apartment and find it very comfortable, I would prefer to continue living here rather than .

Additionally, a with the heating system. As the colder months are approaching, I have noticed that it takes a long time to warm up the rooms properly. If you could arrange for a technician to check it, I would it.

Please let me know if an extension would be possible and . I look forward to your response.

Yours sincerely,

Halbert Stone

Overall assessment

Why this response received Band 8.0

The letter fully achieves its purpose, covering all three bullet points with clear, relevant detail and a consistently appropriate register. Its strongest aspect is the fluent, natural language control; the main limitation is simply that some supporting detail, such as proposed extension terms, could be slightly more specific.

IELTS criteria

How each score was decided

TA Task Achievement

8.0

The letter directly and fully addresses all three bullets from the prompt, stating the desired one-year extension, explaining the changed study plans, and raising the heating problem with a clear request, all in an appropriately polite register.

CC Coherence and Cohesion

8.0

Ideas are organised into logical, well-signposted paragraphs with effective sequencing devices, and the message progresses coherently from opening to closing request.

LR Lexical Resource

8.0

Vocabulary is flexible and precise, with natural collocations such as 'rental agreement', 'settled into', and 'bring to your attention', and only rare minor imprecision.

GRA Grammatical Range and Accuracy

8.0

A wide range of sentence structures is used with strong control, including well-formed conditionals and relative clauses, with errors so rare they barely impede communication.