Samples / Task 1 General letter / Informal letter / Band 6

IELTS General Writing Task 1: Letter to a Host Family

A practice letter to a host family written at a Band 6 level, highlighting common grammatical errors and vocabulary repetitions.

The question

You recently stayed with a host family while studying abroad. Write a letter to the family. In your letter: thank them for having you, describe what you enjoyed most about the stay, invite them to visit you in your country. Begin your letter 'Dear ...'. You do not need to write any addresses.

Dear Mr and Mrs Smith, I am writing this letter for saying thank you for having me in your home last month. I am back home now but I often think about my stay with your family. Your family was so kind of me when I was studying in London. I hope you are all doing well and that the weather is good there. I want to tell you that I really enjoyed to eat the traditional dinners. The foods you cooked was delicious every night. I also liked when we went to the park on weekends because it was very peacefull. It was the best part of my stay. Now I am back in my country and I am starting my study again. I would like to invite you to visit my country next summer. If you will come to my country, I will show you around all the famous places. You can stay at my house and meet my family, they are very excited to meet you. Please write back soon and tell me your desicion. Yours sincerely, John

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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

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 cover all three bullet points and give specific supporting details, but the response could be a little more fully developed to reach Band 9.

Coherence and Cohesion 6

Your response arranges information and ideas coherently with a clear overall progression, but the paragraphing is not always sufficient and some cohesive devices are used mechanically.

Lexical Resource 5

Your lexical resource is minimally adequate for the task, but noticeable errors in word choice and word formation may cause some difficulty for the reader.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy 5

The response is limited by frequent grammatical errors and faulty punctuation which cause some difficulty for the reader.

What would take this higher

To improve your Lexical Resource score, you should focus on correcting spelling mistakes and word choice errors that currently hinder your writing. For instance, correcting spelling errors like 'peacefull' to 'peaceful' and 'desicion' to 'decision' would make a significant difference. Additionally, replacing awkward phrasing such as 'kind of me' with 'kind to me' would help elevate your vocabulary to the next level.

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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