 In this video, I want to share with you a new strategy that I've been teaching my students for Task 1 formal letters. But to make it more interesting, we're going to add a little bit of a challenge in it for me. Can I write a band nine response and teach you at the same time how to do the same thing all under 20 minutes? Let's start the clock and let's get going. So the first part of this strategy is, is it a formal letter or is it an informal letter? What you want to do is just remove semi formal completely. Is it formal? Is it informal? So how do you know if it's formal or informal? If it is informal, it will include here the word friend. Anything else is formal. So you recently booked a part-time course out of college. You now need to cancel your booking. There's nothing here about friend. So this is a formal letter. Step 1 formal or informal doesn't have friend in it. Let's keep going. The next step is read it to understand what is actually going on here. A big mistake that I see students making is they will immediately start writing and then they'll get lost and then they'll lose time. And not only does that affect your Task 1 score, but can also affect your Task 2 score. So just spend a minute or so just reading this to understand it. So you recently booked a part-time course out of college. You now need to cancel your booking. Write a letter to the college administrator. In your letter, say which part-time course you booked. Explain why you need to cancel your booking and ask about a different course. So the key here is to relate it to something in your real life. So for me, you recently booked a part-time course out of college. Obviously I am an IELTS teacher. So what I'm going to do is use my own real life experience and apply that to this question. You are an IELTS student. You could probably do the exact same thing. Say which part-time course you booked, an IELTS course. Explain why you need to cancel your booking. So again, I'm going to apply my real life knowledge to this. Why do students cancel courses? Well, it could be that they had a death in the family. It could be that they are sick. It could be that they're doing a different test like the TOEFL or PTE or something like that. But ask about booking a different course. So the reason why I'm asking you to think about this is and plan it out before you start writing is that last one, ask about booking a different course that could trip a few people up. Because if you said, you know, my donkey died and you know, I'm so filled with grief that I can no longer study anymore. And then you're like, oh, but could I book a TOEFL course? Like that isn't going to make any sense. So it has to make sense because of coherence and cohesion. Like does it actually make sense? So to make it make sense, it would be okay, I don't want a academic course, but could I book a general training course? Or I don't want a TOEFL course, but could I book an IELTS course? Something like that. So you're getting it in your head and how you're going to plan it out. That comes next. So here's the new part of the structure that we're going to use. So we're going to write a few numbers here. We're going to write one, we're going to write two, we're going to write three, and we're going to write four. It'll make sense what these mean in a second. And then here, we're going to write 40 to 60. And we're going to draw a few lines going up to each of these bullet points. So now we need to plan out, we need to add in a little bit of detail. All right, so we don't need anything for here, but we need detail for each of these bullet points. So I'm going to put IELTS and explain why you need to cancel your booking. I'm just going to put academic to general training, explain why I'm just going to put visa because I know about this because I'm going to talk about a spouse visa because my wife applied for a spouse visa and this did actually happen to her. So it just makes it much easier to write about when you know what you're talking about and ask about a different course when we talk about general English. So this is not a huge plan, but it means I know exactly what I'm going to write about and then I can just start writing and not get lost because that's going to cost you a lot of time. Next step has already been done for you. Start it with Dears or Madam. Just copy that, put it in there, don't over complicate it. Next, what we need to do is we need to get a pen and we need to start. So paragraph one, what are we going to write about? We are going to start off with I am writing two. So this is just a simple way to start your letter by showing purpose. What is the purpose of the letter? You always start off with the purpose of the letter and paragraph one and you take where it says one here and you basically paraphrase this and say why you are writing the letter. You recently booked a part-time course at a college. You now need to cancel your booking. Just state that in your own words. I am writing two. Is there any other way of saying cancel? No. So let's just copy that word because there's no other way of saying it. My recently booked part-time course at your school. So I have copied a few of the words there and some of you might be screaming in the comments section. You cannot copy words. Let me show you a little trick at the end. You can come back and you can improve that. But number one, done. All right. I'm writing to cancel my recently booked part-time course at your school. Does it make sense? Does it mean the same thing? Let's go. Two. So paragraph two. Bullet point two. Skip a line. Start your new sentence. So say which part-time course you booked. So I'm going to talk about IELTS. It is the IELTS. Let's go with academic course. Okay. So do we end there? No. That's where the 40 to 60 comes in. All right. What does this mean? It means for each of these bullet points we need to write around 40 to 60 words. Doesn't have to be exactly like if it's 39, don't panic or it's 61. But in and around there some of them will be a little bit shorter. Some of them will be a little bit longer. But it means that you are guaranteed to hit the word limit of 150 words. You have to go over 150 words. And it also means that you're developing each bullet point sufficiently. So add in more detail. What detail would we need to think about here? When you are writing this, think of the reader. What information does the reader need in order to help you? That starts on the 17th of March 2024. So is this 40 to 60 words? No, I can tell just by looking at it. So we need to add in more information. So let's get even more detailed here. It is the weekend course which lasts eight weeks. And my teacher is John Smith. I guess we need to add a little bit more in here. What do courses come with? How would it help the reader understand? Let's add in the booking reference. My booking reference is 123456. So we're around 40 words there. I can tell just by looking at it. But what helped us get there? All we were doing was focusing on the bullet point and trying to help the reader understand. Put yourself in the shoes of the reader. What information would they need? I know that's very difficult for some students based on the emails that we get every day. Next step three, skip a line and start your third paragraph. Explain why you need to cancel your booking. So we need to create some kind of a story or add in more detail to explain why. So I'm going to use my wife's situation related to my own life. She was doing an academic course with me and then she realized that she needed general training and because she her particular type of visa was a spice visa. I need to cancel why due to a change in the United Kingdom's entry requirements for their spice visa. I'm not sure if it's a spice visa or a spice visa. I'm sure lots of people will tell me in the comments if I'm wrong. Okay, so using that technique again, explain to the reader. Don't assume that the reader knows what you're talking about. Imagine you're explaining this to someone who knows nothing about spice visas or IELTS. I know that you're writing to a school, but don't assume anyone in that school knows what you're talking about. So let's explain that in the past. An IELTS score of 6.0 or above was required. The academic module. However, not also accept general training test. So imagine you're sending this to someone. Well, also what, you know, what's that got to do with you add in a little bit more detail to help the person understand. I took the general training test last year. Consequently, I do not acquire your course. So if you sent that to somebody, would they understand your situation? Would they know what's happening? Absolutely. So we move on to the next part for skip a line paragraph for ask about a different course. Okay, so we don't need help with IELTS. What would a student doing the IELTS test would they need help with anything else? Well, they might need help with things like pronunciation or business English or general English. So you can just add that in, but it doesn't have to be that could be anything. We're writing to a college. What do colleges offer? They offer courses. Can we have another course? What would it be for this person? So we don't need that, but we need this. So however, can I take one of your other courses, instead of getting a refund? So what do you want instead? Let's explain. I intend to apply for an office job when I arrive in the UK. So therefore, can you recommend a suitable that might help pronunciation or business English? Is it around 40 to 60 words? Yes, yes, yes. So we're done and we can move on. So just finish it off with kind regards. Kind regards is both formal and informal. So we're just removing the amount of complexity, the amount of things you need to think about. So if it's formal or informal, just put kind regards and then put your name, not my name, because that'll look a bit weird. Okay, final two steps, and then I'll show you how to convert it to informal. What you want to do next is check for any grammar mistakes or any spelling mistakes. I'm going to assume that I didn't make any. Hopefully I didn't make any because then I'll look very foolish, but we can move on to the next step, which is try and improve your vocabulary. So look for any words here that are repetitive, or you could maybe upgrade to a higher level word, but only if it's correct. So just looking through this, probably the word that is repeated the most. So I've taken course from here and I'm saying course, course, course, course. Is there another way of saying that? Well, all you have to do is just go, okay, not that one. Let's put in here pathway, your part time pathway. That's the synonym of course. Now we've added weekend course. So we've got a collocation in there. So let's leave that in. Academic course, another collocation. Let's leave that in. However, can I take one of your other courses? Let's remove that. Let's put programs. So I'm just showing the examiner that I have a wide range of vocabulary and my vocabulary, hopefully is accurate. Now we still have, you know, suitable course, for example, but if you change it to something that's wrong, then that's not going to improve your score. That's going to lower your score. And that should be you done. Hopefully that was within 20 minutes. If it was a little bit more, forgive me, I'm teaching you and making a video all at the same time. But if you want to know how to write an informal letter, this video is for you.