The question

Your friend is an expert in international food and is going to publish a book soon. Write a letter to him describing a special dish from your country. In your letter you should

• describe a special dish from your country

• explain what season people prefer to eat it in

• say why your friend should include this dish in his book

You should understand from this question that you need to write a more informal letter as you are writing to a friend.

The vocabulary

This is potentially a nasty question if you’re a non-cooking male like me. However, what you need to remember is that you only need a few “cooking” words to write the letter – just enough to show that you can write/speak about food in abnormal way. There is no need to give a detailed recipe – IELTS isn’t like that. No technical language is required. Al you need is a selection of these basic cooking words with some food words: 6/7 topic words is plenty.

dish – meal – lunch- dinner-course-delicacy -cuisine-cooking

delicious-tasty-spicy-sour-sweet-savoury

recipe-ingredients

boil -fry-roast-grill

It would be a mistake to forget that you rare writing to a friend who is going to publish a book, so you also need to think about some “book” words such as:

book – publish – author – chapter/section

Being informal – top and tail your letter with news

If you’re writing a more informal letter to a friend, then it is normal to open and close your letter with something social. This does not need to relate 100% to the letter, you just need to show that you are writing to a friend. Examples of the type of phrases you can consider using are:

It was great to hear from you again. [opening]

I really look forward to meeting up with you soon and don’t forget to give my love to your family. [closing]

The sample letter

Dear Joe

It seems like ages since I’ve heard from you. I understand from Bill that you’re writing a book on international cuisine.

Can I suggest you include a recipe for roast beef and Yorkshire pudding in the UK chapter? It really is the ultimate British dish as it’s not just the meal we traditionally have for Sunday lunch, but it’s what most people think of when they think of British cooking. While I suppose the beef is simple enough, the Yorkshire pudding is quite something and a real local delicacy and your book wouldn’t be complete without it. It’s so traditional we eat it all year round, although I suppose it’s really a winter meal to be eaten in front of a good log fire.

Anyway, I hope you don’t get too stressed by the book and that it gets published on time. When it does come out, I hope you’ll remember your old friend and send me a copy.

Hope to hear from you soon,

George

Semi-formal IELTS letter questions

A request

You are not happy with the course you are doing at college and would like to change to a different course. Write a letter to the college director requesting to change your course. You should include details about:

• what course are you doing now

• why you are not satisfied with that course

• what course would you like to change to

You should write at least 150 words.

You do NOT need to write your own address.

Begin your letter as follows:

Dear __________

Understanding the letter question

You are not happy with the course you are doing at college and would like to change to a different course. Write a letter to the college director requesting to change your course. You should include details about:

• what course are you doing now

• why you are not satisfied with that course

• what course would you like to change to

The focus of the letter

While you must write about each topic in the question, this does not mean that you need to write the same amount about each topic. In this question, I would suggest that you should focus on the reasons why you are not satisfied with your current course.

Think about who you are writing to

This is a semi-formal letter as you are writing to someone you know, but that person is in authority. This means that:

• your language should be more formal

• you need to be reasonably polite (it isn’t sensible to be rude about your current course)

Structuring your letter

It is important that you remember to use paragraphs in your letter. The normal structure is that you start any letter by saying why you are writing and you finish it by saying what you expect to happen next. In this case:

paragraph 1: you need to change course (why you are writing)

paragraph 2: try to persuade your college director to let you change course by giving reasons why you want to change course

paragraph 3: ask to set up a meeting to discuss the problem (what you want to happen next)