IELTS Vocabulary: collocations and phrases

There were some really good collocations and phrases in the letter that I wrote last Sunday. Note them down, even if you're not doing the General Training test.

• recommend someone for something
• work closely with someone
• provide a reference
• highly qualified
• have significant (sales, teaching, management) experience
• to be given a post / job / position
• demonstrate skills
• exceptional skills
• organisation skills
• team building skills
• describe someone as (dedicated, hard-working, enthusiastic)
• professionalism in (e.g. in the classroom, in her job, in the workplace)
• commitment to something
• the perfect candidate ('ideal candidate' is another common collocation)
• If you have any further questions
• do not hesitate to contact me

Comments

[Sabrina from Hongkong]

Dear Simon, does writing a letter also have a similar 13-sentence mind picture like the one you introduced for writing task 2, which I find very useful and I can almost immediately apply it in my articles. Hope you can introduce some equally useful tips for General Training Task 1 - Letter Writing. thanks

[sunita]

@Sabrina

http://ielts-simon.com/ielts-help-and-english-pr/2016/11/ielts-general-writing-task-1-video-free.html

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/writing-help/how-to-write-a-business-letter

It is important to cover all items specified in the task, possibly by having a separate paragraph for each one. The other issue is to decide whether a formal business letter is required, or something more informal, as the opening and closing, and also the style of the language, often differ.

[Simon]

Good question Sabrina.

I don't think I've ever specified the exact number of sentences for the GT letter task. However, I suppose I usually write 3 main paragraphs (which cover the 3 bullet points in each task). Each main paragraph will contain 2 or maybe 3 sentences, and I usually put a greeting sentence at the start and an 'ending' sentence at the end.

So, you could aim for a 1,2,2,2,1 structure.

I hope this helps!