An IELTS General Training letter uses a formal, semi-formal or informal tone according to its recipient and purpose. The most polite phrase is not always the most suitable: a request to a friend can sound like an official application, and an inappropriate tone lowers the Task Achievement score. LetsWords reviews your letter against all four criteria and shows where the tone does not fit the recipient and how to correct it. You practise suitable expressions for requests and explanations separately: build sentences with them, get feedback and return to them through spaced repetition.
Tone depends on the relationship, not the complexity of the words
In the official General Training Writing description, IELTS links a letter’s style to its recipient, how well you know them, and the purpose of writing. So the rule “always write formally in an exam” does not work.
A formal letter fits when you are writing to a representative of an organisation with whom you have no personal relationship. For example, you ask a member of staff at a training centre to clarify enrolment conditions. The reader needs the circumstances and the action you expect; friendly jokes and overfamiliarity do not help here.
A semi-formal letter maintains a polite distance even though you know the recipient. You might speak regularly to a teacher and address them by name, but a request to change a lesson time still concerns a professional arrangement. Knowing someone’s first name does not make them a close friend.
An informal letter assumes a personal relationship. You can write warmly and directly to a friend, drawing on shared experience. You do not have to fill the letter with slang: simple, natural words often convey closeness better than a collection of conversational abbreviations.
In all three cases, the request must remain clear. Register changes how you address the reader, not what you want to communicate.
A friend receives a letter fit for an office
Imagine you are moving house and want to ask your close friend Alex to help move a sofa on Saturday. You talk often and have helped each other with household tasks before. This request appears in the letter:
I would be grateful if you could provide assistance with moving my sofa on Saturday.
The sentence is grammatically correct. But provide assistance and the formal wording as a whole make an ordinary request sound distant. You could ask an organisation for help this way; in a letter to a close friend, you suddenly change the usual relationship.
The mistake arises when “polite” is understood as “the longer and more formal, the better”. You can ask a friend for help politely without turning them into a customer support representative.
What LetsWords feedback shows
In the LetsWords letter review, the comment concerns whether the tone suits the recipient. Task Achievement requires not only mentioning the necessary information but conveying it appropriately. The official IELTS Writing descriptors specifically mention appropriate and consistent tone for General Training.
The feedback points to the particular request: the meaning is clear and the grammar works, but the wording is too formal for the relationship described. The correction keeps the action and day while asking as you normally would when you know the person.
In this context: provide assistance with moving my sofa → give me a hand moving my sofa.
The corrected passage:
Could you give me a hand moving my sofa on Saturday?
Could you…? keeps the request polite, while give me a hand makes it sound natural between friends. Alex still understands that you need help with the sofa on Saturday. Neither the action nor the timing has been removed; the distance between writer and recipient has changed.
The greeting and ending must match the tone
One well-phrased request is not enough if the letter begins Dear Sir or Madam, even though you know Alex well. Hi Alex sounds natural for this recipient. Ending with Yours faithfully would restore the formal distance; All the best fits a friendly letter.
These are not universal openings and endings for every task. Their purpose is to show the relationship. If you change only the greeting and leave the language of a formal request in the body, the tone remains mixed.
The opposite extreme is writing to an unfamiliar employee as though you have been friends for years. A formal letter does not need invented closeness to make the English sound lively. A confident tone comes when vocabulary, form of address and purpose all suit the same recipient.
Applying it elsewhere: someone you know is not necessarily a friend
Now consider a different situation: you want to reschedule a lesson with a teacher you have studied with for several months. You know their name, but you are arranging a service and a time. A straightforward semi-formal request fits here:
Would it be possible to move our lesson to Friday afternoon?
You name the specific change and leave the teacher room to agree a time. It is neither bureaucratic nor a command. The phrase is no weaker for leaving out I hereby request.
A complaint letter handles the same task differently: you need to maintain a businesslike tone and clearly state the action you expect. A short example is shown in the IELTS complaint letter guide. For the end of a business letter, it also helps to understand look forward to so a structural mistake does not spoil an appropriate tone.
Why working on letters is easier in LetsWords
A list of “formal” and “informal” expressions gives you options but does not check whether they fit the recipient in your particular text. You can choose a polite request from a list and still produce a letter that turns a friend into an official, then back into a friend.
LetsWords offers General Training Task 1 practice and reviews a complete response against all four criteria. You write a letter and receive comments on what you wrote: where the tone does not suit the recipient, where a request is unclear, and what needs changing. You correct a specific choice of words rather than merely extending a list of impressive expressions.
IELTS Writing Task 1 in LetsWords includes tasks, a format reference and exercises focusing on a single criterion. You can work on the skill you need in a passage, then apply it in a complete letter. Vocabulary for requests and explanations can be practised separately: recall an expression, build a sentence with it and receive feedback on how you used it.
Start with a letter whose tone does not yet fit the recipient. The feedback will point to the exact passage and explain how to express the same thought more appropriately. Start practising IELTS letters in LetsWords. Answer questions about your goal and level when you start, and LetsWords will select your practice. You can try the feedback before paying.