okay Aubry how's your day so far I'm excellent I'm excited to talk about writing today I get
the most questions from our listeners from our students about increasing IELTS writing
scores so every time there's a writing episode I'm like okay the listener's gonna be excited
because writing is so unique in IELTS like you really have to have access to
Insider knowledge like from us because the scoring system what is expected of
you especially in task one for both General and academic the expectations are not clear
um and they're not like logical either the letter you have to write for General training and that's
a lot of what we're talking about today but we're also going to talk about the academic task one the
expectations like these are not things we do in real life right like first of all nobody really
writes letters anymore you know and so it's not like obvious what you should do and if you do
write a letter you certainly don't have you know three brainstormed bullet points that you want to
cover in detail it's not really natural nor do you think about transition phrases and linking words
um we only communicate informally today even in business emails it is short and quick and to the
point we're not thinking about like descriptive phrases and high level grammar structures and
transition phrases like we our brains do not do that today in community ain't nobody got
time for that when it comes to reading a business email like please don't have linking phrases when
you email me Jessica I'm totally gonna do that now just for just because you said not to that's like
that is such a just a strange trigger in my brain as soon as somebody's like you don't do this I'm
like your next email is going to have in regards to our conversation yesterday comma I'd like to
regards to our previous communication about this topic with which I will elaborate on now okay
maybe when the can of worms okay guys so let's get to the question we have a great question about
General training task one letters Aubrey can you read the question please yes this is from ruedi
Rimley hello Lindsay I'm writing about a question I have in writing test one I have to write a
letter if I write a formal letter beginning Dear Sir Madame what do I have to write at the end your
sincerely or Yours Faithfully thank you in advance for your help already such a good question great
question so you know I feel like a lot of students might ignore this bit of the letter so I'm really
happy that the student is thinking about every piece of the letter guys first of all you have to
have this like sign off um because part of your task score is following letter conventions like
you have to have the dear so and so and remember IELTS tells you what to write there dear sir dear
Madam dear name of your friend um but they don't tell you exactly how to end it and you have to
have the sign off like all the best comma Jessica you have to have that or it's not a letter and
your task score can I think the highest you could get is a five for task if you don't have that
um and how tragic would that be if you have this amazing letter that should
score eight or nine for the Press score and then you don't sign it off and you get a five
Faithfully comma you have to have to comma as well or else it's not correct like that could affect
your grammar score because that punctuation is necessary so these little pieces do add up
they are important so all right let's answer this question first yours sincerely or Yours Faithfully
how would you end a formal letter would you use one of those these both sound really archaic to me
right it would sound it would be strange to me if anyone wrote me a letter no matter how formal and
ended it this way so I wouldn't recommend either of those I think we should give some options today
that are more modern more you know appropriate for letters I don't know that your score would
necessarily go down if the examiner sees this and thinks um that seems kind of old-fashioned but
there are definitely better options yeah go down guys uh these are fine if you know just memorize
one that you like you're only writing one letter and it won't affect your score no matter which one
you choose um as long as it's formal so you can totally end it you're sincerely comma or Yours
Faithfully comma um your sincerely I feel like is fine I feel like some people still use that
um but Yours Faithfully that is so weird and I really don't feel like it's so strange meaning of
it even makes sense anymore so I just I wouldn't use that personally like ever yeah it feels the
same as signing off with like you're humble and faithful servant it just is kind of archaic it's
so odd it's like Emily Dickinson would write that not someone today um so okay I would say
at the end of a formal letter we can say you're sincerely comma that's fine um all the best comma
do you feel like that's okay for a formal letter yeah definitely I think so all the best or regards
right these all feel quite formal but they're going to be easy for you to learn remember and
like you said Jessica you're only writing one task one letter yeah so just as long as you know what
the difference is because some of some ways to end a letter are very informal and some are very
formal and you still have to make sure you're hitting that tone totally you know honestly I
think there's you guys only need to remember too sign offs right because remember this isn't like
a deal breaker for your score it just has to be there and it has to be tonally appropriate
that's it so just remember too I would say if you're writing to um like a friend well like if
it's informal or formal just say best comma and then your name underneath it if you're writing a
formal letter then say all the best comma and your name underneath it boom covers everything
yes I love that I think that simplifies it this way you know exactly don't forget that the first
letter of this closing should be capitalized so if you just write best right capital B best with a
comma after it and then on the next line your name of course capitalized right those little things
do affect your grammar score totally all right so academic students out there thank you for hanging
in here we are going to give you some information as well so we've so far talked about the uh
scoring and expectations for concluding a general training task one letter what about academic task
one what's the deal with those conclusions do we even need one that's a really good question
almost for every single academic task one you do not need a conclusion if there's enough
information in the charts graphs diagram that you are presented with plenty of numbers to discuss
then that's what you need to spend your time on right you need that solid intro with an overall
trend and then you need body paragraphs where you have divided that information are sharing
what's important you don't have time or room to be wasting on a conclusion that's unnecessary for
your score exactly so in task one you should write between 150 and 180 words you only have 20 minutes
in order to get a high task score you have to have very specific information and I'm telling you guys
you need all of those 150 to 180 words to fulfill the task score and the vocab score you have to be
very descriptive about your numbers to show good vocabulary so really you need all of those words
you do not have time or room or leeway to repeat yourself to paraphrase things you've already
said to summarize you can't do that there's not time there's not room so no you're not going to
have a conclusion in task one except what is the exception here yeah if there were a diagram that
really does not have a lot of information like for example example like a nature diagram then
there might not be enough to write that you know 150 to 180 words and in that case you can write a
conclusion the best thing to do is to rephrase your overall trend as a final sentence totally
um so I'll give you an example I remember a few years ago there was this horrible actually it came
around a couple times um throughout my many years of examining um there was this horrible nature
diagram um what was it it was like describing how sand dunes are formed and there was like some wind
lines and some little circles representing some sand and like there was almost there was like
not enough information for even a hundred words on here like it was awful nobody did well like nobody
who had to write about that got above a five seriously so um in that case right if there really
is not a lot of information and seriously this only happens on nature diagrams and not even every
nature diagram um then yes you'll have to have a conclusion because you have to show a complete
essay uh but guys any questions with numbers and stuff there's more than enough information
there's always in fact too much information and that's what you're graded on is only choosing
what's important to put in your essay so yes 99 of the time you do not need a conclusion and if
you have like rocked it in 17 18 minutes and you think oh I have a couple of minutes I should write
a conclusion no save it for task two save it for task two don't do anything that doesn't help your
score exactly it's all about the score you guys um all right that's it for us this week remember
you can send us your IELTS questions support all earsenglish.com we would love to feature
your question and give you a shout out on a future episode so send us your questions guys all your
sorry support at all earsenglish.com all right awesome I'm thanks for this valuable lesson today