Writing 4 — a letter asking for information and a problem-solution essay

A fourth full General Training Writing paper, built around the letter the test describes most often: asking for information.

Task 1 puts you in front of an advertisement for an evening course in bookkeeping for small businesses. It names the course administrator, Mr Daniel Hall, but leaves out what you need to know. The bullets ask you to explain why you are interested, to ask about the timetable and the cost, and to describe a particular need of your own and ask whether the college can help. The letter is formal, but not in the way Writing 1 is: it opens with a name, so it closes "Yours sincerely", not "Yours faithfully". Most of the grammar that matters is in the questions. "Could you tell me whether the fee includes the materials?" is an indirect question with statement word order, and "could you tell me does the fee include" is the mistake examiners see most often in this kind of letter.

Task 2 is a problem-and-solution essay on small independent shops closing and high streets emptying. The question has two parts, and an answer that spends 200 words on problems and ends with one line of solutions is only half an answer. The solutions should also answer the problems the essay has actually named — a strong essay reads as one argument, not two separate lists.

You print the sheet, write on it, photograph the pages and upload them. What comes back is a check of each task against the four criteria an examiner uses — task achievement or task response, coherence and cohesion, lexical resource, and grammatical range and accuracy — with length checked first, because being under the minimum is the easiest penalty on the paper to avoid. The check names what your answer did not do rather than issuing a band score: a band is a judgement a trained examiner makes against descriptors held to a common standard, and before the test a list of what is missing is more use to you than a number. Task 2 needs more room than the ruled lines give it; continue on the back or on one extra sheet and photograph that page too.

On the paper-based test this is exactly how you will work. On the computer-delivered test you will type, but the tasks are the same, and writing by hand against the clock is still the honest way to find out what 20 and 40 minutes feel like.

A deck of flashcards goes with the paper: greeting and closing pairs, the fixed phrases of a letter of enquiry, indirect questions, and the linking language of a problem-and-solution essay.

The course, the college, the administrator and the situation are invented by Zestly, and no IELTS material is reproduced. Each task comes with a model answer written for this paper to show one way of meeting it, not the only one.

• Write a formal letter of enquiry that opens with the reason for writing and asks precise questions
• Match the greeting and the closing: "Dear Mr Hall" with "Yours sincerely", "Dear Sir or Madam" with "Yours faithfully"
• Form indirect questions correctly — could you tell me whether the fee includes, not whether does the fee include
• Explain a personal need briefly and turn it into a clear question
• Answer both halves of a problem-and-solution essay, with each solution tied to a problem you have named
• Develop two or three points on each side with a reason and an example rather than listing them

Practice material written by Zestly, based on the ielts.org description of the General Training Writing test (Task 1 letter, Task 2 essay, four assessment criteria).