Check your IELTS General Training letter and its tone.
A General Training letter can be grammatically clean and still land badly, because it was written to the wrong reader. VoyaLang reads your letter for what that kind of letter has to do, and marks it against all four criteria.
The mistake that grammar checkers cannot see.
Task 1 of General Training is the only piece of IELTS writing where you are told who you are writing to. That is not decoration. It sets the register, and register is where most letters lose marks that the writer never sees, because nothing in the letter is wrong. A complaint to a company that opens with Hi there, hope you are well contains no error a spellchecker would flag. It is simply the wrong letter.
- Formal
- You do not know the reader's name, or the relationship is official. Complaints, applications, requests to an institution.
- Semi-formal
- You know the reader but the relationship is not personal. A neighbor, a manager, a landlord, a tutor.
- Informal
- A friend or family member. Contractions and everyday phrasing belong here, and sound wrong anywhere else.
Getting this wrong is quiet. Nothing in the letter is misspelled and no grammar rule is broken, so the mistake survives every proofread you give it and only shows up in the mark.
Eleven letter types, eleven different jobs.
Every letter in the exam has a purpose, and the purpose decides what a good answer does. An apology that explains at length why it was not really your fault has answered a different question from the one asked. VoyaLang reads each kind of letter for the job it has to do:
- Advice
- Advising without lecturing, and giving a reason for each suggestion.
- Apology
- Taking responsibility early, then offering a remedy rather than an excuse.
- Application
- Stating what you are applying for in the first line, then evidencing it.
- Complaint
- Facts before feelings, and naming the outcome you want instead of only the problem.
- Congratulations
- Warmth that stays specific to what the person actually did.
- Explanation
- Cause and consequence in an order the reader can follow without rereading.
- Information
- Answering exactly what was asked, in the order it was asked, without padding.
- Invitation
- The occasion, the practical details, and a clear ask for a reply.
- Request
- Making the request easy to say yes to, and easy to act on.
- Suggestion
- Proposing rather than instructing, and acknowledging the reader's position.
- Thank you
- Naming the specific thing you are thanking someone for, not gratitude in general.
Every letter type is available on every account.
Three bullet points are three obligations.
Every General Training Task 1 gives you three things to cover. They are the task, not a set of suggestions, and the most common shape of an incomplete letter is one that develops two of them well and mentions the third in a closing sentence.
One paragraph per bullet, in the order given, is unglamorous and it works. It makes coverage obvious to the reader and it makes your letter easy to follow, which is itself part of what you are marked on. VoyaLang tells you when a bullet has been touched rather than answered.
Write in British or American English as you prefer. IELTS accepts either as long as you stay consistent, and a rewrite comes back in the variety you wrote in rather than quietly converting your spelling.