Task
Your friend has been offered a place on a course at the university where you studied. He/She would like your advice about finding a place to live.
Write an email to your friend. In your email
- describe where you lived when you were a student at the university
- recommend the best way for him/her to look for accommodation
- warn him/her of mistakes students make when choosing accommodation
Candidate’s Answer
This is an answer written by a candidate who achieved a Band 5.0 score.
Dear Lisa,
I am so glad to help you to look for accommodation where is near my university. When I was at the university, I had been lived in an apartment for 4 years, which is offered to students or others from my school. It only takes 5 minutes on foot to the main gate of school, and it just takes 10 minutes on foot to the bus stop or train station. There has very convinent transport around my apartment. By the way, if you search apartment online, you should go to double check the information at reception. Because they might not update the information on time. So I advise you go to see the teacher who is in charge of accommodation at first. It will be saving more your time and energy.
What’s more, when you are choosing accomdation, there are two suggestions for you: First, please check the date that you are going to school. Is it any avilable accomadation for you at that date.
In addition, please make sure how long will you stay there. You are not able to get a refund even if you move out the accomadation earlier. So check how long is available you can stay.
At last, hopefully you can find a suitable accomodation soon and enjoy the life at university.
Friendly,
Examiner’s Comment
This is an attempt to provide advice on finding a place to live. All bullet points are touched on but not clearly presented, especially the third bullet point; there is no indication that this is a typical mistake students make. The format is appropriate for a letter despite the use of [Friendly] as a closing. The response presents the bullet points in the same order as the question. There is some good use of cohesive devices [which | who], but most are quite basic [Because | So | In addition] and faulty cohesion results in some repetition [on foot | accommodation].
The range of vocabulary is just adequate for the task but there are errors in spelling, even with the same word [accomdation | accomadation | accomodation]. There are some attempts at complex sentence structures [even if], but there are frequent errors in the use of articles and tenses [had been lived | It will be saving more your time], including the use of present tenses to talk about where they ‘studied’ in the past. These errors do cause some difficulty for the reader.
The Band Score could be improved if spelling and word choice were more accurate and if there was more accuracy in sentence structures.
