A letter to the homestay host family. Ielts task 1.

writing a letter to a family in new zealand

You are going to visit New Zealand for an English and Homestay programme. You have just received details of your homestay host family. In your letter:

- Introduce yourself
- Ask the family some questions to get information that is important to you
- Tell the family about your arrival date and time

Dear Doe,

I am thrilled by the warm welcome letter from you two days ago. Thank you for letting me stay at your place where I can experience the true local lifestyle. It would be unfriendly if I don't write back a letter to introduce myself to you and your family. I am 24 years old student who studies at the University of Hong Kong. I am grateful that my professor had encouraged me to visit other countries to gain more remarkable experience as my life journey goes forth.

As I chose to come to New Zealand with the programme of 'English and Homestay', I was very excited and at the same time, I came up with many questions regarding the weather condition and living cost in my mind so I hope you can clear my doubts. I heard that the weather in Willington is unpredictable so do you think I should bring more clothes for my eight-week stay? I also wonder the expenditure on foods and transportation in approximation as I need to budget my money for a conversion before I arrive.

The arrival of my flight is 18th December next month. The duration of seven hours flying over the Pacific ocean would allow me to sleep before the plane lands at noon. If you can tell me a better way to get to your house from the airport besides taxi, it would be great too.

Thank you again and I look forward to your reply.

All the best,

SG

It is much appreciated if you can score my letter. Thank you.

SG, I think you have a 5.5-6 letter here. You covered all of the bases in terms of representing the instructions you were provided. The letter was informative, casual, and easy on the eyes. Sure you had a few grammar and sentence structure missteps along the way which affected the final scoring consideration. It still did not diminish the effectiveness of what you wrote. Another problem with the letter is that you wrote 251 words when the advisable word count for this 20 minute test is no more than 200 words, no less than 150. This is another reason why I had to reduce the score of your essay. The reason you went overboard with the word count is because you used too many words in the opening statement. A simple opening salutation, then a single sentence acknowledging their letter would have been more than sufficient. When you are under a word and time limit, you need to make sure to keep everything about the presentation short but informative.

@Holt, thank you for the scoring! I had set a timer and it went off 20 minutes as soon as I finished. Although I have to admit that I was aiming to finish in 15 minutes so that I would give myself more time to task 2 writing. I now realise the redundancies that I was forcing myself to make when it need not. I will keep in mind for the word limits in Task 1. Thanks again!