IELTS Writing - Letters

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Hi, I'm Rebecca, and today we're going to have a lesson in letter writing.

This will help you if you're preparing for the IELTS exam, because in the general IELTS

exam, you have two writing tasks to do, and the first one, as you know, is letter writing.

The second one is an essay, we won't be speaking about that today, but we'll be focusing on

the letter writing.

The part that we're going to talk about today is just how to open and how to close your

Let me explain to you what I mean.

In the IELTS exam, there are three types of letter tasks that you're given.

The first one is formal, the second one is semi-formal, and the third one is informal.

So, depending on which type of task you have, you have a different way to open the letter

and to close the letter.

Let me show you what I mean.

So we'll start with the formal letter.

What do we mean by a formal letter?

A formal letter in the IELTS exam might be a letter where you're asked to write to a

bank, or write to an insurance company, or write to an airline, okay?

Any kind of formal letter is basically a letter to a company and to somebody who you don't

So, what happens when you write a letter to somebody you don't know?

How do you start this letter?

We start with the word "dear" in English, but what goes after that?

Alright, let's look at this.

Okay, so you're writing to a company, you don't have anybody's name, so how are you

going to begin?

Well, here's one way.

You could write "Dear Sir" if you know that the person you're sending the letter to in

the company is a man.

If you know that the person you're writing to is a woman, you can write "Dear Madam."

Or the third option, if you're writing to a company,

this is the most formal situation, you don't know anyone's name, you could write "Dear

Sir" or "Madam."

This covers both the options.

Now, what you must remember when you're opening the letter is that the way in which you open

the letter determines the way in which you close the letter.

Since this is the most formal situation, you don't know anyone's name, you need the most

formal closing.

So, this is, in general terms, a formal ending, "Yours faithfully."

Now, if you need to write this, remember to spell it carefully, many students make a mistake,

there are some possibilities where you could make a mistake in the spelling, "F-A-I-T-H-F-U-L-L-Y."

So, if you start "Dear Sir" or "Madam," you should close with "Yours faithfully."

This is the first situation, this is the most formal situation.

In a minute, we're going to look at the second situation, which is the semi-formal.

So, take a minute to look over your notes, and I'll be right back.

Okay, did you have a chance to review your notes about the formal?

So, now we're going to move on to the second situation, where you're writing a semi-formal

A semi-formal letter might be, for example, when you're writing to your landlord, or you're

writing to an employer, your boss, for example, or you're writing to a librarian, or a school

counselor, somebody that you know.

And if you've been studying for the IELTS, you know that there are several letter topics

such as these, right?

So, how do you begin these letters?

Let's take the first example.

In this example, we're writing to a man.

We know his name is John Smith.

So, how do you start this letter, okay?

What do we say here?

Do we say, "Dear John?"

Do we say, "Dear John Smith?"

Do we say, "Dear JS?"

Do we say, "Dear Mr. John Smith?"

Or do we say, "Dear Smith?"

Well, everything that I've mentioned so far is actually wrong.

The correct answer would be this, "Dear Mr. Smith," okay?

In a semi-formal letter, you use the "dear," which we always use, you use "Mr.," which

is a title for a man, and you use the last name or the family name or the surname.

You don't use the first name in a semi-formal letter, and you don't use the first name any

time you have "Mr." or any time you have a title of any kind.

So, if it's a man, it's actually very easy.

You always say "Mr." because "Mr." refers to a married man, a single man.

It doesn't matter.

What do we do now with this?

This time, you're writing to a woman.

You know her name is Mary Jones, but you don't know if she's married or not.

So what are you going to do?

Well, there are, in fact, some ways you can approach this.

Let's look at the possibilities for writing to a woman, okay?

The first possibility is to say, "Dear Miss Jones."

You can say, "Miss Jones," if you know that she's unmarried or single.

The second possibility is to say, "Dear Mrs. Jones."

Mrs. Jones is if you know that she's married or that she's a widow.

A widow means that she was married at the time when her husband died.

The third possibility, however, is probably what you might want to do when you're writing

to a woman and you don't know if she's married or not.

This is to say, "Miss," M-S.

M-S is the relatively more modern option.

It actually was created during the Women's Liberation Movement.

The women wanted a title which was, like the men, neutral in terms of marital status, okay?

So because when you say, "Miss" or "Mrs.", you know if the person is married.

When you say, "Miss," you do not know.

The pronunciation of the last one is, "Miss," M-I-S, and the spelling is only M-S, okay?

So here, you can say, "Dear Miss Jones."

Now, for both of these, the correct ending would be, "Yours sincerely," okay?

That would be an appropriate ending in terms of formality for these openings, "Yours sincerely."

I'm going to write that for you again for a special reason.

Please take note of the word, "sincerely," because many, many students make a mistake

in the spelling of this word.

Many people leave out the E, so you want to make sure not to do that, and leave out some

other letters or add letters.

So be really careful of the spelling of this word.

You don't want to make a mistake on something you're sure, you're almost certain to use

on your IELTS exam, okay?

So this is the semi-formal situation.

So take a minute to look over that, and I'll be right back to talk about the informal situation.

Okay, did you have a chance to review your notes?

We so far did the formal and the semi-formal way to begin a letter.

Now we're talking about the informal way.

So if you're writing to John Smith and he's your friend, you can write, "Dear John."

For Mary Jones, you can write, "Dear Mary."

For either of these beginnings, you can end with "Best wishes" or "Best regards."

I hope this has helped you in writing better letters, at least in terms of opening and

If you have any questions or comments about this lesson, please feel free to join our

forum at www.engvid.com.

And if you want information about the IELTS exam, a useful site is www.goodluckielts.com.

Thanks very much.