IELTS General Task 1: Letter Apologising to a Manager for a Work Error

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Writing Prompt

You made a mistake at work that caused a problem for your team, and you would like to apologise to your manager and explain the situation.

Write a letter to your manager. In your letter:

describe the mistake that you made
explain how it happened and what its effects were
say what you will do to prevent it from happening again

Write at least 150 words. You do NOT need to write any addresses. Begin your letter as follows: Dear Ms Owens,

Show Band 8–9 model answer

Dear Ms Owens,

I am writing to apologise sincerely for the error I made while preparing last week’s sales performance report, which has caused difficulties for the team.

When consolidating figures from the regional spreadsheets, I accidentally duplicated the figures from the North division and omitted the final numbers from the South. As a result, the total quarterly revenue in the report was overstated by approximately 12%. I understand this led you to present inaccurate data in Monday’s management meeting and required the team to spend additional time issuing a corrected version to senior stakeholders.

This mistake occurred because I rushed to meet the deadline and relied on manual copying rather than using the standard template with built‑in checks. I also failed to request a second review from a colleague before submitting the document to you.

To ensure this does not happen again, I have already created an automated checklist in Excel to cross-verify regional totals, and I will strictly follow the reporting template in future. I have also arranged a brief peer-review process with Daniel for all monthly reports before they are sent to you.

Once again, I am very sorry for the inconvenience and additional work this has caused.

Yours sincerely,
Alex Turner

Why this response works

This letter would score highly because it fully addresses all three bullet points with clear, specific detail. The purpose and tone are appropriate for a semi-formal workplace context, maintaining respect without being overly formulaic. Coherence is strong: each paragraph has a clear function (apology, description, cause/effect, prevention), and ideas are logically sequenced. A wide range of vocabulary related to workplace reporting and error (e.g. “consolidating figures”, “overstated”, “peer-review process”) is used accurately. Grammatical structures are varied and generally error-free, with complex sentences and accurate referencing, meeting Band 8–9 features.