A friend from another town will come and stay in your apartment. Providing keys and instructions.

IELTS General Writing: a friend's visit

Q:
You are about to go on vacation for a month. A friend from another town will come and stay in your apartment.
Write a letter to this friend. In your letter
-Explain where your friend can get the key to the apartment.
-Give your friend some instructions about using your apartment.
-Recommend some places to go.

A:
Dear Sarah,

Welcome to Pingtung to have your summer vacation, it's really long time no see you! Hope next time we can meet each other in some place.

You must be tired by traveling such a long term trip from Taipei to my home. The key could be taken by my neighbour who lives in number 17 on the same street of my home. Please meet Sonya around 5pm to 9pm, I have already ask her helping to save the key. Sonya is a pretty nice girl and also my best friend in town, I think you both can talk a lot with each other.

After taking the key, you have to open three doors of my home. My cat "LALA" which you have seen in Taipei would welcome you near the entrance. Please take care of and play with him, Lala used to feel lonely if nobody plays with him.

When it comes to travel, food is always the most important thing. There are so many delicious Hakka food in my hometown, but I would recommend you to try the restaurants which is on the top of my list. The restaurant calls "Old Lai Noodle Shop" which is on "No.2 of Cultural Road", you can find it under a greatly huge tree. Old Lai's traditional rice noodle with soup and the fried vegetable are my favorite, and you also can have some Hakka meatball in front of the counter which is made of fresh pork.

I'm glad you would like to visit my hometown, if you have any question, please feel free to ask my mother who just live in front of my home. Enjoy the trip, see you soon.

Best,
Ying Lai.

LAI, there are number of grammatical errors that distract from the reading of this letter. The first problem that appears is your confusion regarding gender pronouns. Your cat is named "LALA". That is a female specific gender name. Using the male pronoun of address such as "he" and "him" are therefore incorrect. "Lala" should have been addressed in the female pronoun of "she" and "her" instead.

Next, about the key, when you say "The key could be taken by my neighbor", that means your neighbor took the key without your permission. The correct phrase should have been "You make get the key from my neighbor" or "My neighbor has the key."

You did not give any instructions about how you use your apartment. For example, how does one turn on the hot water? Where do you keep the remote control of the TV? What is the wifi password? What is the landline phone number? Where do you keep the emergency numbers? How is the stove lighted? Are there any noise regulations in the area?

When you were asked to recommend places to go, that meant more than one place and most certainly, not just an eatery. You should have instructed your friend about how to use public transport to go the park, museum, mall, cinema, where the tourist attractions such as theme parks or shopping destinations are, and then, tell her about the best place(s) to eat around town based upon her location as a tourist.

You had a good effort in developing this paper. However, problems abound in terms of its development and presentation. Take note of the problems you had in this essay and make sure to correct it with your next practice General Writing test essay. Don't worry, you can improve, just keep practicing.