Band 9 in IELTS General Training Task 1: What the Descriptors Stop Saying Above Band 7

Search for a band 9 General Training letter and every page tells you the same thing: match the register, cover the three bullet points, use the right opening and closing. That advice is correct, and it is the advice for reaching band 7.

The published band descriptors say so in their own wording. The word tone appears in the General Training Task Achievement column at bands 7, 6, 5 and 4. It does not appear at band 8, and it does not appear at band 9. If register were what separates a band 8 letter from a band 9 letter, the descriptor for those two bands would mention it.

What General Training Task 1 asks for

Task 1 in the General Training test is a letter. You are given a situation and three bullet points, and you write at least 150 words in a suggested 20 minutes. Task 1 contributes one third of your Writing band; Task 2 contributes the other two thirds.

The letter is marked on four criteria, each on a whole band scale from 0 to 9:

• Task Achievement, whether you covered the situation and the bullet points and developed them
• Coherence and Cohesion, whether the letter is ordered and linked so the reader follows it
• Lexical Resource, your vocabulary range and accuracy
• Grammatical Range and Accuracy, your sentence range and grammar accuracy

Register means the level of formality you choose, and the prompt decides it. A letter to a company you have never dealt with is formal. A letter to a manager or a landlord you know is semi formal. A letter to a friend is informal. We set out how to read the prompt for this in the three registers and when each applies.

A reported band of 9.0 for the task needs the four criterion scores to total 35 or 36 out of a possible 36. The full enumeration of which combinations reach it is in what band 9 in Task 1 actually requires, and it holds for both versions of Task 1.

Read the Task Achievement column in order

Here is the published General Training Task Achievement wording, bands 9 down to 5, quoted:

9 fully satisfies all the requirements of the task; clearly presents a fully developed response

8 covers all requirements of the task sufficiently; presents, highlights and illustrates key features/bullet points clearly and appropriately

7 covers the requirements of the task; presents a clear purpose, with the tone consistent and appropriate; clearly presents and highlights key features/bullet points but could be more fully extended

6 addresses the requirements of the task; presents a purpose that is generally clear; there may be inconsistencies in tone; presents and adequately highlights key features/bullet points but details may be irrelevant, inappropriate or inaccurate

5 generally addresses the task; the format may be inappropriate in places; may present a purpose for the letter that is unclear at times; the tone may be variable and sometimes inappropriate

Three things are visible when you read it as a scale rather than as a list of tips.

First, tone is a band 7 and below concern. At band 5 it is variable, at band 6 it is inconsistent, at band 7 it is consistent and appropriate, and then it stops being mentioned. The reasonable reading is that consistent register is assumed once you are above band 7, not that it stopped mattering.

Second, the only word that changes between band 7 and band 8 on the bullet points is how far you take them. Band 7 covers and highlights them but they "could be more fully extended". Band 8 "illustrates" them. Band 9 is a "fully developed response".

Third, the band 9 wording contains no checklist at all. It is two clauses about completeness and development.

So the question for a band 9 letter is not whether your tone is right. It is whether each of the three bullet points carries a developed point rather than a mentioned one.

What the letters in our library show

We can count this rather than assert it. Bandly's General Training letter samples publish a full letter with an estimate for each of the four criteria. There are four of them. These are estimates from Bandly's own engine, not marks from a qualified examiner, so treat them as one consistent set of judgements rather than as official scores.

Task Achievement is the highest of the four criteria in every one of the four letters. It never drops below 8. Lexical Resource is the lowest or joint lowest in every one of the four, and never rises above 7.

That is a small sample and it is not a rule of the exam. But it points the same way the descriptor column does. The bullet point checklist, which is what every page on this query drills, is the part these writers already pass. The language is the ceiling.

The gap this creates, on a real letter

Take the host family letter, estimated at band 6 overall with Task Achievement at 8 and Lexical Resource at 5. It covers all three bullet points. It thanks the family, it says what the writer enjoyed, and it invites them to visit. That is why Task Achievement is 8.

Here is the opening, as written:

I am writing this letter for saying thank you for having me in your home last month.

And a line from the body:

I want to tell you that I really enjoyed to eat the traditional dinners. The foods you cooked was delicious every night.

The faults are not register faults. The tone is correctly warm and informal throughout. They are language faults, and each one belongs to a named criterion:

1. for saying should be to say. A wrong preposition before a verb form. Lexical Resource, the word choice bullet.
2. enjoyed to eat should be enjoyed eating. Enjoy takes a gerund. Grammatical Range and Accuracy.
3. The foods you cooked was should be The food you cooked was or The foods you cooked were. Subject verb agreement, plus food used as a countable noun. Grammar and word choice together.
4. I want to tell you that adds nine words and no information. Nothing in Lexical Resource rewards it, and Coherence and Cohesion counts the extra step the reader takes.

Rewritten, keeping the same warmth and the same informal register:

I am writing to thank you for having me in your home last month. I enjoyed the traditional dinners most of all; the food you cooked was delicious every night, and I still think about the soup on my first evening.

Three errors are gone, the padding is gone, and one concrete detail has been added. That last addition is the band 8 to band 9 move in the descriptor wording: the bullet point is now illustrated rather than mentioned.

What band 9 Lexical Resource asks for

The published band 9 wording for this criterion is short:

uses a wide range of vocabulary with very natural and sophisticated control of lexical features; rare minor errors occur only as 'slips'

Two words in it do the work. Natural rules out the memorised formal phrases that letter templates hand out, because a phrase chosen because it looked impressive is the opposite of natural. Slips sets the error tolerance: at band 9 an error has to look like a typing mistake, not like a pattern.

By contrast the noisy neighbour letter in the table scored 6 on this criterion while scoring 9 on Task Achievement, and the marked faults were affecting on my daily routine and music hobby. One wrong preposition and one odd compound. Both are patterns, not slips. Our fuller treatment of the criterion is in what Lexical Resource measures.

A three minute check you can run on any letter

Register first, because it is cheap and it caps you at band 6 if you get it wrong. Then spend the rest on the things the top of the scale actually names.

1. Register, once. Name the relationship in the prompt, pick formal, semi formal or informal, and check the opening, the closing and any contraction against that one choice. Thirty seconds.
2. Three bullets, three developed points. For each bullet point, find the sentence that answers it, then check there is a second sentence giving a reason, an example or a consequence. A bullet answered in one clause is a mentioned bullet.
3. Delete every announcing phrase. I want to tell you that, I am writing this letter to say, As you can see. They cost words and add nothing.
4. Check your prepositions after verbs. Affect something, not affect on something. Enjoy doing, not enjoy to do. Discuss something, not discuss about something. This is where both of our lower scoring letters lost Lexical Resource.
5. Read the last sentence alone. It should close the letter and match the register, not restate the whole task.

Then compare against a worked example. The three annotated letters in our General Training Task 1 sample breakdown show one letter per register with the four criteria explained sentence by sentence.

If you want the four criterion estimates on your own letter instead, paste it into Bandly and you will get a band estimate for each criterion with the sentences each judgement rests on, which is how you find out whether your ceiling is the bullet points or the language.