Signed Formal Itinerary Made Easy

Signed formal itinerary

in this lesson we're going to look at IELTS letter writing and we're going to look at a sample ban 9 semi-formal letter the IELTS band 9 letters require a high skill level and you must satisfy all of the ban descriptors for a band 9 response and these fall under task achievement coherence and cohesion lexical resource and grammatical range and accuracy if you look at the IELTS band descriptors for task 1 writing you'll see these explained a bit more on what they are for each descriptor you can see them in a link below the video now this letter is one that needs to be written to the head teacher of a school so it can be viewed as a semi-formal letter so something important to get right is the tone so for a formal or semi-formal letter you want to avoid language that's too informal because you're not writing to a friend or a family member but there is a not a great deal of difference between formal and semi-formal letters so let's take a look at the question so in this one so your child is going on a school trip abroad for three days and the headmaster of the school has asked any parents if they would like to come along to assist and you would like to go so you're writing the letter to the headmaster and specifically you'll be even three bullet points you need to do need to answer to respond to then this one you have to say why you would like to go what you could do to help but during the trip and to ask some further questions questions about the trip now remember you'll give me be given for further instructions and they are that you should write at least 150 words you don't need to write addresses and it'll also tell you how to start the letter in this case it's with dear so let's look at the beginning of the letter so you start with the salutation and the purpose the salutation is who the letters to so in this case we've got this is a semi-formal letter so we've got dear mr. Jenkins remember you were given deer so you can then make up a name and this is a salutation you could say the first name for example Bob Jenkins if you wanted and then you can give the purpose of the letter so I'm writing to you regarding the upcoming trip to Paris for which you're looking for people to accompany the children so this can come from the prompt and in this particular one the writers also noted that they're the father of Joshua Williams and would be delighted to join the trip and help out then this was the first book bullet point so say why you would like to go so this of me I can look at an example paragraph for this so we can see one body paragraph has been written for the first point it's worth noting though that sometimes the purpose of the letter could be combined with this first point that's often the case there might only be three body paragraphs however for a band sort of eight or nine letter I'd recommend separating them so you can say in this case I've explained why they would like to go so I can assist during this time because currently I am off work for a few months and would like something to fill up my free time although the person notes I've helped at the school out on a variety of ents such as a school sports day last summer and also the jumble sale a few months ago and I thoroughly enjoyed being of assistance so you should note then the ideas are expanded on and it and explained so you must expand on your ideas and explain them and for a band of eight or nine you should give a lots of support so for the second bullet point you're asked to suggest what you could do to help out during the trip this then can make up your next body paragraph for this second point you can see specifically there's a topic sentence and you can see this relates to this point so I suggest what you could do during the trip there are a number of things I could do to help out this makes it very clear what the paragraph is about and which point it's referring to and these are then explained for example I can come early in the morning to the school before we leave and make sure everybody's accounted for and on the bus but also of relevance is the fact that I can speak French and know Paris well so I'll be able to assist with the day-to-day practice practicalities of moving the children around and going to the museums and other attractions the third bullet points are some further questions about them Tripp is what you have to do so again we've got another body body paragraph for this third point again there's a topic sentence relating specifically to this first point and then further explanation is given so questions do you have an itinerary about where they're going what they're gonna see they're also asking about so they can prepare themselves also asking about what time exactly are you due to be back in the UK so know again that these ideas are expanded so with the itinerary they've asked so that why they want that it'll be useful to prepare myself for some background reading and regarding the time this person has explained why they need to know the time because I have an event in the evening when they're due to come back and they don't want to miss this so then we come to closing the letter so this should be closed with a polite ending of the letter thank you for considering my offer and I look forward to hearing from you and then a formal closing phrase it's very important that you do not miss the formal closing phrase because this can affect you affect your band score quite considerably now because we started the letter with deer and name this would normally end with yours sincerely so let's look at why it would particularly get AB & 9 now the first criteria is marked on his task achievement now the particular letter as we've seen the purpose is very clear that was given at the start of the letter the correct opening and closing phrases we used it covers all the bullet points and it fully extends each one nothing needs to be added to improve it you'll notice that it was 310 words and this might seem quite long because the maximum is 150 however a band 9 writer will usually be able to do this and they will have more fully extended points then you'll see for somebody who would maybe a weaker writer who might be writing less so if you are a weaker writer then reduce the amount you writes into the port of each point and stick more to the 165 to 185 word range this will mean probably getting a lower score but you have to be realistic about what you can achieve in the time so coherence and cohesion is the next criteria in this one it can be read with Asian ease and it's logically organized skillful paragraphing has been used the purpose is given first body paragraph each bullet point has a clear body paragraph and there's a closing paragraph there's perfect use of transition words in connectors and substitution is used correcting skillfully well just look at some examples of these in see for example the topic sentence here to say what the paragraph is about got some connectors here if example words showing that this is contrasting with the other paragraphs we've got also to give extra information we've got so to join two clauses we also have a subordinating conjunction to join an independent and the dependent clause another subordinating conjunction and also another one here although so these are all words that are connecting the paragraph together in a coherent way but we can also look at some examples of substitution here substitution is where you use a word instead of another one you use before so you don't repeat yourself so there is used here they're referring to the place they're going this so do you have an idea where you can send me so I know what we are going to see whilst there this refers to sending get to getting an itinerary we have it so although I can miss it which means the event in the evening I would like to let them know in advance if this will be the case in there that's referring to having to miss it so these are all good uses of substitution and an avoid repetition if you look at Lexus so why it's a bad night for Lexus which mainly refers to vocabulary but other things such as collocation so good is good natural range of vocabulary the vocabulary is appropriate as a topic phrasal verbs and idioms are used correctly and also as a skill for use skill for use of collocations so we'll look again some examples of these so some good vocabulary of particular relevance day-to-day practicalities attractions example of a phrasal verb correctly used here to help out example here of a collocation so accounted collocates with four we say accounted for that's the example of collocations there's much more in the letter but there's just some examples here now if we look at the grammatical range and accuracy it's completely accurate grammar and punctuation and only - lips so this would be needed for a band 9 there's a wide range of structures with full flexibility and accuracy so again look at some examples for example would like or would would be perfect so would being used correctly to talk about imagine things in the future correct tense is used I am currently off work present perfect I have helped also because so we have support some subordinating clauses this makes up an adverbial clause as to making adverbial clause and for example enjoyed being of assistance so the correct prepositional phrase phrased used after the verb enjoyed so these are just some examples so now we'll look at the full high-ups letter that you can see here so you'll see we've got the salutation then we have the purpose bullet point one is addressed in the next paragraph member as I mentioned sometimes you will see the purpose and the bullet point one combined together in the first paragraph we have bullet point to discuss bullet point three the polite closing and then the closing phrase so something like this would help you to get AB and 9 for your letter you