General Task 1 – Your 16 Minute Crash Course
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You are now listening to the IELTS podcast. Learn from tutors and ex-examiners who are masters of IELTS preparation. Your host, Ben Worthington. General task one, your 22-minute crash course starts now.

My name is Ben Worthington. I've been doing IELTS for way too long. I've been doing it for a long time, probably over 12 years now. And I used to be a general English teacher. Now I just focus... not now. I quickly made the switch to IELTS. The best. Why? Because we can find the best students in IELTS. These are motivated students.

These are competent students, ambitious students who go and get goals and go places to Canada to get a permanent residency. IELTS students change the family story, the generational family story.

I mean, maybe you don't even settle in Canada, but the mere fact that you went there and you stayed for a couple of years, that's going to have such an impact on your thinking, your mentality when you go back to your own country. Anyway, let's jump into general task one. I got a little bit distracted there. First of all, we look at, by the way, this whole outline, this very quick crash course is based off

all the contents in the General Task 1 course we have at ieltspodcast.com I just looked at the curriculum and I was like right that's enough material there more than enough to make a quick 20 minute tutorial all about high level skills so

If you find that you're struggling with some of the skills I'm mentioning, if you go to our ieltspodcast.com site, you'll be able to see a full, you'll be able to see the courses there, and you'll be able to get the tutorials, and you'll be able to get the course with all the modules. And in each module, we go into much more detail, and it's extremely practical. Let's jump into it. Lesson one, the structure.

Now, when we are planning our IELTS General Task 1 letter, we should be using the bullet points given to us. Doing this will make sure that you are basically answering everything that they ask for.

you don't have to go into massive detail for each one a couple of sentences but three or four sentences roughly for each bullet point you know if it's asking I'm not going to go into detail just a few sentences for each point and using the actual question for your structure will make sure that you do get the exact word that you get as close to possible for maximum points regarding task response now

it's that simple I'm not even going to talk more about it there's no there's no need number two the phrases right this one if it is a letter to

maybe a teacher a professor a job like a request for work or an applicant a job application sorry or a formal letter to a company to an organization then we definitely need to start it off with dear sir or madam okay unless we've got the some more detail from the question but very roughly if it's formal dear sir or madam comma

I'm writing in relation to the job advert. I'm writing to explain my interest in. I'm writing to request an apology. I'm writing to ask for a refund. Using that set structure gets you off to the right start. Now, then, if it is formal, we probably want to include phrases such as however, therefore, furthermore, in addition, just to connect our ideas. Whereas, if we're writing a letter to a friend,

then we probably don't need however therefore and furthermore we could just say and yeah and I'd like to see some of the best sites your city has to offer please let me know which ones we could do and what time frame and in what time frame

okay for example also we can use we if it's a letter to a friend then we can you we can almost write as close we can write closer to how we speak ie we can use contractions however we're not going to make it so informal like it was absolute it was an absolute bangin weekend of

that's too informal okay and likewise if it's if it's somewhere in between for example to a work colleague we have to write a letter or an email or a message to a work colleague then we can we can use something that's it's neutral and and this was still going to use contractions but we're not going to use exclamations we're not going to see you use phrases like see you later or

hugs and kisses you know it's not going to be like that so it's going to be in between the very formal end which is like a job application and the very informal way it's where it says write a letter to a friend okay and as I said just make sure it's not too informal as I just mentioned

formal versus informal you need to get clear as to who you are writing to I kind of just spilled over there because it was linked the phrases we use is linked to whether it's formal or informal so I'm not going to go into this much detail exercises how do you improve well you can use our AIS a check-in tool to give you feedback

you can look at formal letter writing online and review like I said in other tutorials you can find a perfect letter make sure it's absolutely perfect make sure it's published on a trusted source such as IELTS podcast you can just go to IELTS podcast.com sample letter sample general task one letter and you'll see lots of perfect examples there

You can also just put Cambridge English letter writing samples, you know, and you're going to get some more samples there. And what you do is just look, cover, write. Look at the sentence, write it out. Sorry, look at it, cover it up, write it out from memory. If it's too difficult, just write it out word for word, copying.

as I said before doing this a few times for each IELTS prep session that you've scheduled will help you improve and it's just a very quick cost-effective way to improve you can also get feedback from tutors send your essay into us we'll correct it at the moment you can send in your essay or your report or your letter for nine dollars we'll manually look it up look it over and give you feedback

If you're in a hurry, use the AI Essay Checking tool. Even something as simple as Google Docs will give you some feedback. It's not specialized in IELTS, of course, so you're not going to get your score. You're not going to get more detailed feedback, but it will help you with your grammar. Phrases. Now this is the key part for General Task 1, especially the formal letter.

we need to include phrases such as "yours sincerely" when we're ending or "yours faithfully" depending on the letter we also need to use set copy paste phrases I call them and it's like please find attached my CV for more details please find attached the document

please let me know at the nearest at the best possible time you know just copy paste phrases that we'd find over and over again in general in letter writing and writing in relation to and writing with regards to all of these phrases

are just essential for you to memorize I'm not a massive fan of memorization but for these you absolutely do need to memorize them let's go into a little bit more detail about these phrases we can say I'm writing to inform you I'm writing to request I wish to bring to your attention

the pothole in our road I wish to bring to your attention the rude behavior of your customer service representatives on July 5th 2025 whatever 2024 I'm writing in response to an advert I saw I'm pleased to inform you that okay again if we're writing a reply we can say in response to your recent inquiry as discussed in our previous conversation

again, if we're writing for a job interview a job application, sorry please find attached my CV please find enclosed my resume now if you're using resume make sure that most of your other voc... all your other vocabulary is American if you've got that opportunity to choose between two okay for example attached because in British English we use CV in American English they use resume

"Attached you will find a brief overview of my skills." "Attached you will find my CV or my resume." I would like to highlight that I'm incredibly motivated. I would like to highlight that I have the relevant experience regarding the job advert. Making a request. We should use our modal verbs here. Could you please send me the required information before November, for example?

I would appreciate it if you could send the relevant information. I kindly request that you reply as soon as possible as this matter is urgent. Please let me know if you're available to work on September 3rd, whatever. Okay. Again, if we're offering assistance, we can say, if you require any further information, please do not hesitate to contact me.

I am at your disposable should you need any further assistance that's a great sentence there because we've got inversion and we've put should in slightly uncommon place okay we used it instead of saying you should it's just the normal standard way we've inverted it and we say should you need any further assistance and it's incredibly polite should you have any questions please feel free to contact me using these structures will help you score higher

Next one: expressing gratitude or appreciation. Thank you for your attention to this matter. I appreciate your prompt response. That's a great one because it's incredibly versatile. Thank you for your time and consideration. I mean, a personal one that I do is "thank you in advance." Okay, if I'm requesting for some information, if I'm requesting a refund, I just say "thank you in advance." Just sets the tone. It's incredibly polite.

and it sets like an assumption that I'm going to be thanking them sets an assumption that they've done the work and I'm thanking them already gets things moving closing salutations yours sincerely if you know the recipient's name yours faithfully if you do not know their name so if you started off with dear sir or madam then you're going to end with yours sincerely if you started off with dear Mr Jones then you're going to end with yours faithfully

best regards kind regards you're sincerely or just sincerely again if it's a neutral one an email to a colleague will say best regards or kind regards if it's a letter to a friend we could use best regards or kind regards I would personally use take care and wishing you the best because it's just slightly more informal because that's how we would write to a friend also just one more point

when we start this letter whether it's informal or formal we will say dear or hi and then insert dear sir or madam yours faithfully or even just start it off to whom it may concern now the important thing here is comma blank space and then indentation which means just a small space for the first word it goes in slightly

slightly further to the right than normal. Normally it should be flush left to the margin but for letters we just start off with the space and then start. I am writing with regards to. Right, that's it for today's tutorial. A very brief one. I honestly believe that General Task 1 is probably one of the easier tasks.

among IELTS task 2 or academic task 1 slightly easier because we can rely on the phrases we don't have to argue we just follow the bullet points write a few sentences relatively straightforward however having said that I would still recommend getting feedback

and just making the list of your errors, making a list of your mistakes and just following the standard process. We teach IELTS podcast, which is, you know, we focus on minor and we break it down to the smallest parts. We master those master part that we master those tiny parts and then move on to the next bit. We get the basics and it's far easier to learn this way.

Secondly, we're noting our improvements, we're noting our errors, and we're keeping track of them and we're focusing on them and just making small incremental improvements unless you've already got the language skills in which case in most situations you just need a framework and the exam skills which are far quicker to acquire. Anyway, this is the beauty of getting feedback. I mean, the AIS eChecker is fantastic, don't get me wrong.

but obviously you're going to get more valuable feedback with manual essay correction because the tutor will be able to tell you okay your language skills are solid focus on the exam skills and the AI just isn't there yet probably is in a couple of years but we'll just have to wait until it's at that level and if you're wondering whether it's exam or language skills you need to work on best way to do that is just to get feedback

you can do that at ieltspodcast.com and again you can sign up to our newsletter you'll get tutorials in your inbox you'll get a tutorial on how to get the most out of the not a tutorial you get a whole course on how to get the most out of the essay checking tool we have on our site as i said before smart students nowadays are using tools rather than just information

So that's it from me today. If you got some value from this tutorial, please share it. We don't charge for these tutorials. We give them out for free. It'd be a nice way to just say thank you by sharing it and spreading the word and we can help more students get that IELTS band 7, 8 or 9 or even 6.5 in some cases. Whatever your goal is.

You probably will be able to achieve it just by doing some focused work, getting organized, setting up a routine, as I say in most of my tutorials. That's it for me today. Good luck with your IELTS exam and I'm wishing you all the best.