An informal letter goes to a friend or family member, and the examiner is checking that you can actually relax your English: contractions, phrasal verbs, natural openers ('Great to hear from you!'), and a friendly sign-off. Writing an informal prompt in a formal register is a Task Achievement penalty. The letters below cover invitations, news, favours, and apologies.
The one rule
It’s a friend. Contractions, phrasal verbs, and a warm sign-off aren’t optional — formal register here costs marks.
On test day
It's one of the recognised Task 1 formats, so it's fair game on test day — but you can't reliably predict which one you'll be given. Treat every format as likely and practise across all of them rather than betting on a single type.
Templates
Learn the shape, not a script. A reliable structure for informal letter questions saves planning time, but a memorised answer bolted onto the wrong prompt is penalised. Adapt the structure to the exact question in front of you.
Marking
Against the four official IELTS Writing criteria — task achievement, coherence and cohesion, lexical resource, and grammatical range and accuracy. Getting the format right mainly protects your task achievement score; the other three come down to your language.
Practice volume
Enough to make the format automatic, then stop drilling it in isolation. Once you can structure a informal letter response without thinking, your time is better spent on the language criteria that actually move your band.
More Task 1 General Training types
Attempt any informal letter question in the exam workspace — 20 minutes on the clock, then a band for all four criteria in about 60 seconds. Starts with a 3-day free trial.
“A letter to a friend asking for career advice”