IELTS General: Writing Task 1 – 14 Top Tips!

TRANSCRIPT

Hi. I'm Rebecca from engVid. If you need to do the IELTS general exam, I'm sure it's for a very important reason. Perhaps you're trying to immigrate to another country, or get admission to a college program, or join a professional training program. Whatever your reason, I know you want to get the highest marks possible. Right? Of course. So I'm going to help you to do exactly that in one particular area of the exam, and that's in your writing section. Now, in the writing section there are two parts, one is a letter and one is an essay. In this lesson we will focus on how you can get the highest marks possible in the letter-writing section. Okay? The 14 tips that I'm going to give you I promise you, if you apply each one of these things, step by step you're going to get more and more marks. Okay? So stick with me and we will go through them. Let's get started.

So, the first thing you have to identify when you read the letter-writing task is: What type of letter am I being asked to write? Is it a formal letter, is it a semi-formal letter, or is it an informal letter? Well, how do you know that? Well, you can know it in a few ways and I'm going to explain them, but one of the ways that you can know it is to look at the second point that you need to understand, is to identify the purpose of the letter because some purposes are more formal than other purposes. All right? For example, some formal letters might ask you to request information; or apply for a job; or complain about a product or a service, maybe to an airline, maybe to a store, something like that; or to make a suggestion or a recommendation. All right? To a shopping mall, to a restaurant, something like that. These are more formal situations. These are when we are writing to people or companies that we don't know. All right? That's the clue: You don't have anybody's name, you just have the name of the company.

All right. Semi-formal letters might include things like this: Complaining to a landlord; or explaining something, a problem or a situation to a neighbour; or asking a professor for permission to miss an exam or to submit your assignment late. Whatever it is. Okay? The details vary. Doesn't matter. And here, what's...? What identifies the semi-formal? The semi-formal we know it's still a kind of a formal situation, but here we usually do know somebody's name. You would know the name of your landlord, or your professor, or your neighbour, for example. Right? So that means something in terms of the way that you write the letter, the language, the tone, the style. All of this is affected by whether it's formal, semi-formal, or informal. And I'll explain more to you as we go along.

Now, examples of informal letters might be where you're being asked to invite a friend, or thank a friend, or apologize to a friend, or ask for advice from someone that you know. Okay? Here what's important is that you really know this person well and you're probably going to call them by first name. So I'm going to explain exactly how all of this translates into the next step, which is how you begin your letter.

So the first step was to identify the type of letter. Second step, the purpose. Now the third step is to open and close the letter correctly. Once you've done steps one and two, you will know how to do this step. Because if it's a formal letter then you start with: "Dear Sir" or "Madam", and you end with: "Yours faithfully". Okay? That's how it is. If it's a semi-formal letter, you will start with something like: "Dear Mr. Brown" or "Dear Ms. Stone" or "Mrs. Stone". "Ms." Is when you don't know if a woman is married or not, or if she's just a modern woman. And you end the semi-formal letter with something like: "Yours sincerely". Okay? What we're trying to do is to match up the formality of the situation with these terms that we're using. Okay? The opening and closing salutations they're called, these are called. All right? Next is the informal one.

[ArefFayyazieagle]

As an IELTS teacher I sincerely feel the need to leave a comment and say, Bravo 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻 Top notch ✌✌✌

[susilacherla]

Thank you for your inputs. I watched few of your videos. With 3 days of preparation i got overall 8 and in writing 7.5.

Thank you for your videos

[karanveersingh]

I watched this writing tutorial along with some others and I was able to get 7.0 in Writing in General Training. Thanks a lot!!!

[edryladloc]

Who would dislike this kind of informative video?

This is definitely accurate and perfectly presented. 👌

[h.sandhu]

I want to thank you from my heart. I'm writing this after receiving my score/result. I booked a computer based test, which was scheduled for after 3 days. Clearly i underestimated it and it was an impulsive decision. However, your this lecture made it a cake walk no joke!
Thank you.

[MK-wyjj]

I would like to inform you that you are one of the most amazing teachers, I have ever seen in my life. Thank you so much for making such a paramount video for us! I really appreciate that.

[syedrehan]

Dear rebecca
I saw your video on writing one day before my ielts test and it helped me tremendously to understand the concept of writing and i achieved band 7 in writing. Thanks.

[jawwadilyaas]

The Best teacher I have in my Life. So concise and complete

This is undoubtedly one of the most comprehensive yet easy to understand, ielts FREE lesson i have got! Thank you so very much!!!

[manalkhan]

Your video helped me to score 7.5 in my first attempt, which i think is a decent band.

[Sunvee]

This is undoubtedly the most effective video on Task 1 IELTS general writing on youtube.

[gokhandoyaner]

that was the best lesson that i learnt during my IELTS studyings and really appreciated to watch and know you here. Thank you so much and wish the best for future works.

[wanderingwithabraham]

That's the best video explaining ielts writing test format. Although i did ielts but it has expired now. I was thinking to join training classes again but thanks for saving my money. Regards. You seem to be such a humble and helpful person

[mohitaggarwal]

Thanks a lot Rebecca for your painstaking videos, I got my desired score in ielts band 8.5, l9, r9, w7, s8

[pacifista]

Thanks Rebecca! Your video helped me a lot in my IELTS...got an 8 overall, thanks!

[margaretruguru]

Watching this as tomorrow is my exam.. really grateful i will make it through your help

[izharmohammed]

This is so far the best video I have watched on task 1

[acehuevalentine]

Your teaching skills is really excellent. . You make everything easy when you start talking ... thank you so much

[empflvt]

You are such a good teacher. I have my IELTS on September 12. Wish me luck! Thank you for this video.

[Khushpreetkaur]

this video is really helpful, I am writing my ielts exam tomorrow and i am very much confident and excited after watching this video