Samples / Task 1 General letter / Formal letter / Band 6.5

IELTS GT Task 1 Letter: Broken Kitchen Appliance Complaint

A practice Band 6.5 GT Task 1 complaint letter about a broken microwave, featuring common grammar, spelling, and vocabulary limitations.

The question

You recently bought a kitchen appliance which stopped working after two weeks. Write a letter to the shop manager. In your letter: give details of the purchase, explain what is wrong with the appliance, say what you would like the manager to do. Begin your letter 'Dear Sir or Madam,'. You do not need to write any addresses.

Dear Sir or Madam, I am writing this letter to complain about a kitchen appliance that I bought from your shop recently. I bought a brand new microwave appliance in 12th October from your shop in the city centre. I was very happy with this appliance at first, but now I am having some serious problems with it. Actually, the appliance stopped working yesterday. When I turn it on yesterday, it started making a very loud noise and some smoke came out from the back side. The buttons on the front does not respond at all when I press them. This is very dangerous because it is not safety to use a damaged appliance in the kitchen. I am very dissapointed because it only worked for two weeks. Therefore, I would like you to give me a full refund for this appliance. I have the original receipt of the purchase and I can bring the appliance back to your shop. I hope you can resolve this problem quickly. I look forward to hearing from you soon. Yours faithfully, John Smith

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This answer was written by a language model to a real exam question, then scored by Bandly against the four public band descriptors. The band is a software estimate. No examiner has marked it, and the band a real examiner would award may differ. Scored with google/gemini-3.5-flash on 2026-09-08.

Estimated overall

6.5

Mean of the four criteria, rounded the way the exam rounds it.

Task Achievement 8

You are at Band 8 for Task Achievement because you clearly meet all parts of the task and present a well‑developed, consistent complaint, but the details of the purchase are a little limited to fully satisfy Band 9.

Coherence and Cohesion 6

Your response shows a clear overall progression of ideas, but the use of cohesive devices is sometimes mechanical, and paragraphing could be more skilfully managed to group related ideas more effectively.

Lexical Resource 5

Your vocabulary is limited and you make noticeable errors in spelling and word formation, which can cause some difficulty for the reader.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy 6

The response uses a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, but frequent errors in grammar and punctuation, such as 'does not respond' and 'it is not safety', sometimes cause difficulty for the reader.

What would take this higher

To improve your score, you should focus on your lexical resource by expanding your vocabulary range and correcting spelling errors. For instance, instead of repeating the word "appliance" seven times, you could use varied terms like "microwave," "device," or "unit." Additionally, correcting spelling mistakes such as "dissapointed" to "disappointed" and fixing word form errors like "not safety" to "not safe" will help elevate this criterion to a band 6.

Find out what this essay would score

Paste your own answer and Bandly returns an estimated band for each of the four criteria, with the sentences that pulled the score down. Under a cent an essay, about six seconds.

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