Letter Workshop · Session 5 of 5

Full Mock & the AI-Feedback Mastery Guide

Duration: 90 minutes Focus: a surprise timed letter · the consolidated synonym chart · reading all four criteria

0:00 – 0:25

Surprise mock — any register

No hint about which register this needs. Read the prompt, decide the register in the first ten seconds, and write. This is the closest this workshop gets to exam conditions.

Task 1 — surprise prompt

You have been offered a job in another city, but taking it would mean relocating. Write a letter to a close friend asking for their advice.

In your letter:

describe the job offer
explain what is making the decision difficult
ask for their opinion

Begin your letter Dear (name). Write at least 150 words.

Your mock letter

Target: 150+ words · 20 min

Words: 0 Not saved yet

20:00

Mock — 20 min

Now compare to Session 1

Open your Session 1 baseline bands next to this one. Where did you move most? That's the skill this workshop actually built. Where did you move least? That's what to keep drilling with the Letter Bank's 40 practice situations after this workshop ends.

0:25 – 0:55

The consolidated synonym & paraphrase chart

Everything from Sessions 1–4 in one printable reference. Keep this open in a tab during the real exam preparation weeks.

Overused word	Formal	Semi-formal	Informal
problem	issue, defect, a matter of concern	issue, difficulty, a bit of a hiccup	hassle, pain, nightmare
good	satisfactory, commendable	decent, pretty good	great, amazing, brilliant
bad	substandard, inadequate	disappointing, not up to scratch	awful, rubbish, a letdown
want	would like, request	would like, was hoping	fancy, would love
ask	request, enquire	ask, wonder whether	ask, wonder if
help	assistance, support	help, a hand	a hand, a favour
unhappy	dissatisfied, dismayed	unhappy, not thrilled	gutted, fed up
tired	fatigued	tired out, worn out	shattered, knackered
fix	rectify, resolve, remedy	sort out, deal with	sort, fix up
quickly	at your earliest convenience, promptly	as soon as you can, fairly soon	ASAP, super quick
increase	rise, has been raised	gone up, increased	shot up, gone through the roof
surprised	astonished	quite surprised, taken aback	gobsmacked, couldn't believe it

Paraphrase techniques, side by side:

Technique	How it works	Example
Synonym swap	Replace the key noun/verb/adjective with an accurate synonym.	"unhappy with the facilities" → "disappointed with the facilities"
Word-class change	Turn a noun into a verb, or an adjective into a noun, and restructure the sentence around it.	"the delivery was damaged" → "the damage to the delivery"
Active ↔ passive	Flip subject and object; useful for varying sentence openings.	"the company hasn't replied" → "no reply has been received from the company"
Register shift	Same idea, different formality level — the skill unique to GT letters.	"you need to fix this" → "it would help if you could look into this"

0:55 – 1:30

Reading the four AI-marked criteria — a complete guide

The AI evaluation on every box in this workshop returns a band for each of the four official IELTS Writing criteria. Here's what each one is actually checking, and what kind of edit moves it.

Criterion	What it's really checking	The edit that usually moves it
Task Achievement (TA)	All three bullets covered and developed · correct register · purpose clear early · 150+ words.	Add one specific detail (a date, name, reason) to whichever bullet is thinnest. Move the purpose sentence earlier if it's buried.
Coherence & Cohesion (CC)	One idea per paragraph · logical order · linking words used accurately, not just frequently.	Check every paragraph covers exactly one bullet. Replace a repeated linker ("also… also… also") with a varied one (furthermore, in addition, as a result).
Lexical Resource (LR)	Range of vocabulary, used accurately · natural collocations · register-appropriate word choice · avoiding repetition.	This is where the synonym charts in this workshop apply directly — find a repeated word and swap it for a table alternative, in the right register.
Grammatical Range & Accuracy (GRA)	A mix of simple and complex sentences · accurate tenses, articles, prepositions · few repeated error patterns.	Combine two short simple sentences using a relative clause, a conditional, or a subordinating conjunction (although, since, given that).

The rule for choosing what to fix

Always start with the lowest band, not your favorite criterion to work on. A Lexical Resource fix does nothing for a Task Achievement problem — if a bullet point is missing, no amount of better vocabulary recovers those marks.

Using "Add from photo"

If you handwrote a letter in class, use the Add from photo control on any writing box: photograph the page, and it transcribes the handwriting into the textarea so it can be AI-marked like a typed draft. Check the transcription against your handwriting before marking — it's very accurate but not infallible, and a misread word will affect the Lexical Resource band.

What the AI band is — and isn't

It's a fast, private, repeatable practice estimate that lets you test whether an edit worked, as many times as you like, with no waiting. It isn't an official IELTS result, and it won't catch every nuance a trained human examiner would. Keep submitting by email so your teacher sees the actual scripts and can catch what the AI misses.

Final self-audit

Looking at your Session 1 baseline and your Session 5 mock side by side:

Which criterion improved the most?
Which criterion is still your weakest?
Name one synonym-chart word you now use without thinking.

Workshop complete

Keep the Letter Bank's 40 situations in rotation for ongoing practice, and keep running the revise-and-resubmit routine on every letter you write between now and the exam.