Some advice

Your friend is an expert in international food and is going to publish a book soon.Write a letter to him describing a special dish from your country. In your letter you should

• describe a special dish from your country
• explain what season people prefer to eat it in
• say why your friend should include this dish in his book

An English-speaking friend has written to you to say that he/she is planning to visit your country.

Write a letter to your friend. In your letter

• give advice about where he/she should go
• explain what the best time of year to come is
• invite him/her to stay with you for a few days

You should write at least 150 words.

You do NOT need to write your own address.

Begin your letter as follows:

Dear __________

The question

Your friend is an expert in international food and is going to publish a book soon. Write a letter to him describing a special dish from your country. In your letter you should

• describe a special dish from your country
• explain what season people prefer to eat it in
• say why your friend should include this dish in his book

You should understand from this question that you need to write a more informal letter as you are writing to a friend.

The vocabulary

This is potentially a nasty question if you’re a non-cooking male like me. However, what you need to remember is that you only need a few “cooking” words to write the letter – just enough to show that you can write/speak about food in abnormal way. There is no need to give a detailed recipe – IELTS isn’t like that. No technical language is required. Al you need is a selection of these basic cooking words with some food words: 6/7 topic words is plenty.

dish – meal – lunch- dinner-course-delicacy -cuisine-cooking

delicious-tasty-spicy-sour-sweet-savoury

recipe-ingredients

boil -fry-roast-grill

It would be a mistake to forget that you rare writing to a friend who is going to publish a book, so you also need to think about some “book” words such as:

book – publish – author – chapter/section

Being informal – top and tail your letter with news

If you’re writing a more informal letter to a friend, then it is normal to open and close your letter with something social. This does not need to relate 100% to the letter, you just need to show that you are writing to a friend. Examples of the type of phrases you can consider using are:

It was great to hear from you again. [opening]

I really look forward to meeting up with you soon and don’t forget to give my love to your family. [closing]