Advice to a Friend on Learning a New Sport

Your English-speaking friend who lives in your town has asked for your advice about learning a new sport. Write an email to your friend. In your email • recommend a new sport that would be suitable for your friend to learn • explain how your friend could learn this sport • suggest that you both learn this sport together. You do NOT need to write any addresses. Begin your letter as follows: Dear ……………,

Annotated response

3 correction notes

Hi James,

I’ve been thinking for a while about what you asked me last month. You said you wanted to lose weight and make friends and that you thought taking up a new sport might be the best thing. Well, how about rugby?

I know that rugby sounds challenging and perhaps even dangerous, but it’s nowhere near as bad as you probably think. In fact, it’s pretty safe. There are loads of touch rugby games around here and you aren’t going to get hurt because there’s no . It’s just running about for an hour.

It’s a really fun sport and I’ve been meaning to try it myself. I’ll tell you what. I’ll come along with you if you’re interested. It’ll be a great experience and try to join a team and make it a regular thing. How does that sound?

Let me know.

David

Overall assessment

Why this response received Band 7.5

The letter achieves a friendly, consistently informal register and covers all three bullet points with a natural, convincing voice, which is its strongest aspect. The main limitation is that development of some points, particularly how the friend could actually learn the sport, remains fairly brief and relies on general statements rather than concrete detail.

IELTS criteria

How each score was decided

Task Achievement

7.0

The letter covers all three bullet points in an appropriately informal tone, recommending touch rugby, outlining how to learn it, and proposing to learn together, though the learning pathway is developed in only general terms.

Coherence and Cohesion

7.5

Ideas progress logically across well-linked paragraphs with natural cohesive devices, and the message flows smoothly throughout.

Lexical Resource

7.0

Vocabulary is flexible and idiomatic for an informal register, with expressions like taking up, nowhere near as bad, and loads of, though the range is not especially wide or precise.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy

8.0

A wide range of grammatical structures, including conditionals, contractions, and varied clause types, is used accurately and flexibly with no noticeable errors.

More responses with feedback

View all 3 responses (7.0–8.0)