Task
Your English-speaking friend has asked for your help with a college project helshe is doing about celebrating New Year in different countries.
Write a letter to your friend. In your letter
- say how important New Year is to people in your country
- describe how New Year is celebrated in your country
- explain what you like about New Year celebrations in your country
Examiner’s Answer
This model has been prepared by an examiner as an example of a very good answer.
Dear Mia
It’s great to hear from you; your project sounds really interesting. I’d be happy to tell you about Tet in Vietnam.
Tet is short for Tet Nguyen Dan and it’s our New Year according to the lunar calendar. It’s the first day of spring and it’s usually in January or February. It’s really important to us as it’s a chance for the family to come together and we visit the gloves of our ancestors. It’s probably the biggest festival in Vietnam and it’s a public holiday. We say if good things happen on the first day of the new year, the whole year will be full of blessings.
I always loved it as a child because I would get a red envelope with money inside it from the older members of the family. Now I like visiting friends and the extended family on the week of Tet and enjoying the lovely candied fruits that we have on this occasion.
I hope that helps. Do ask if there’s anything else you’d like to know.
All the best
Examiner’s Comment
This is a full response to the task. The candidate addresses the first two bullet points in the second paragraph, then covers the last bullet in the third, but could add more about how New Year is celebrated. They mention [the biggest festival…public holiday] but give no details about how it is celebrated.
However, the enthusiastic tone is just right for a letter to a friend, and progression in the response is clear. There are some effective linking expressions [according to | because | Now], although in the second paragraph, most sentences start with [It’s], so a wider range would improve the response.
The range of vocabulary includes some less common items and some good collocation [come together | good things happen], but it could be wider. Similarly, there is a mix of grammatical structures, including conditionals [if], but generally, the range is limited with simple structures and short, compound sentences. Overall, this is an appropriate and engaging response. To improve it, the range of cohesive devices and grammatical structures could be widened.
