Hello and welcome to this IELTS general writing preparation video. Today, I'm going to take you through task 1 and we'll be focusing on writing an informal letter.
Now out of the 3 letters that you may have to write for task 1, I find that students generally prefer the informal letter, because it is informal. So perhaps some of these words and phrases and grammar may come more naturally to you.
However, in this video, I'm going to show you a strategy that you should follow a foolproof outline which will help you organize your thoughts. I'll give you some vocabulary, some great phrases for informal letters and then we'll go through a step-by-step example.
So let's get started. First off, I just want to go through a little bit of the information when it comes to writing task 1.
Now you're going to have 60 minutes for the entire writing section. So it's best that you spend 20 minutes on writing task 1.
This will allow you to have 40 minutes for writing task 2, which is more involved and has a higher word count. You can afford count for writing task 1, you should be writing at least 150 words—this is your minimum.
However, you could stay from 150 to 200, usually around 200 mark, it seems like you might be writing a little bit too much. So stick to at least 150 but going over just a bit adding about 50 words wouldn't be so much of a problem.
Just make sure you're devoting enough time to writing task 2 and not spending too much time on this. Like I said earlier, you're going to have to write letters in writing task 1.
You're going to have three tasks and one of these will be chosen for you on test day. So you're either going to write in a personal or informal semi-formal or formal style.
Today we're going to be talking all about the informal letter which will have more of a personal style. And in your letters, you're going to have a mix of things to do to write about and you may have to give or ask for information.
