Where do you lose points on TOEFL Write an Email?

What does the Write an Email task ask you to do?

Write an Email is a task in which you read about an academic or everyday situation and write an email that fits a given purpose within 7 minutes (ETS "Updated TOEFL iBT Test Overview", hereafter "the Test Overview", checked 2026-10-30). The example purposes ETS gives are making a request, giving information, proposing a solution, making a recommendation, and extending an invitation (ETS Writing section page and the Test Overview, checked 2026-10-30). One item appears in the Writing section, worth up to 5 points (ETS "TOEFL iBT Test: 2026 Update Test Blueprint and Specifications Document", hereafter "the Specifications Document", checked 2026-10-30).

The sample task in the Test Overview describes the situation, names the recipient, and lists three things to do in the email. Its answer box already has the recipient's address and the subject line filled in, and the directions ask you to write as much as you can in complete sentences.

Scoring combines the ETS AI scoring engine (which rates features of a response using natural language processing and machine learning) with human scoring. Human raters score responses that the AI is not confident about or finds hard to handle, and humans also rescore randomly selected responses (ETS "TOEFL iBT Technical Manual", ETS Research Report RR-25-12, 2025-10, hereafter "the Technical Manual", PDF pages 35 and 39, checked 2026-10-30). All page numbers in this article follow PDF page order.

All scores in this article are on the 0 to 5 scale for a single task. This is a different scale from the Writing 1 to 6 bands on the score report; how to read the bands is covered in the Unlock Prep (unlockprep.com) guide "How do TOEFL 1 to 6 scores compare with 0 to 120 scores?". To see all three Writing tasks at once, read "How do I prepare for the three new TOEFL Writing tasks?" first.

How does the ETS scoring guide divide 0 to 5 points?

The ETS scoring guide gives each score a name and lists, line by line, the features seen in a typical response at that score. Below is our short paraphrase of the ETS wording (ETS Writing Scoring Guide; the same wording appears in the Test Overview, pages 23 to 24, checked 2026-10-30).

A score of 0 goes to a blank response, a response that rejects the topic, a response not in English, a response that copies the prompt in full, a response unrelated to the prompt, or a response of random keystrokes (same scoring guide).

As examples of social conventions, ETS lists politeness, register (level of formality), the order in which information is presented, and the way actions such as requests, refusals, and criticism are put forward (same scoring guide, 5-point row). The Test Overview states that this task also measures mechanical conventions such as spelling, punctuation, and capitalization (Test Overview, page 14, checked 2026-10-30).

Table 3 of the Technical Manual also divides the scoring dimensions of Write an Email into the same four (content; variety of sentences and vocabulary; social conventions; accuracy and errors). As examples of features the scoring engine looks at for each dimension, it lists the number of sentences, discourse cohesion, and similarity to the prompt; sentence variety, word frequency, and the accuracy of collocations (pairs of words that are used together); politeness markers (modal verbs, hedging expressions); and errors in grammar, word choice, and spelling (PDF page 37, checked 2026-10-30).

Which sentences separate the two example answers?

The task and the answers below are all examples we wrote for illustration. We wrote the task ourselves, and the score levels are not ETS scoring results but our judgment from comparing each answer with the scoring guide wording.

Task we wrote:

You borrowed a biology textbook from the university library. At home, you found that several pages were missing. Write an email to the library staff. In your email, do the following. - Describe the problem. - Explain why you need the book this week. - Ask what you should do.

Example answer A (Our view: close to the 2-point row)

Hello.
I borrow the book from library last week. The book is very bad, many page is missing. I need it because I have exam. Please give me new book fast.
Thank you.

Example answer B (Our view: close to the 4-point row)

Dear Library Staff,

I am writing about a biology textbook that I borrowed from the main library on Monday. When I opened it at home, I found that pages 45 to 60 was missing.

I need the book this week because my first lab report is due on Friday, and the missing chapter explains the experiment I have to describe.

Could you let me know what I should do? If another copy is available, I can exchange it at the front desk tomorrow morning.

Thank you for your help.

Best regards,
[Your Name]

For each sentence where the answers differ, the scoring guide lines it falls under are shown below.

1. The first sentence, which states the purpose. A "I borrow the book from library last week." → B "I am writing about a biology textbook that I borrowed from the main library on Monday." A gets the tense and the articles wrong, and its first sentence does not show what the email is about. Lines it falls under: in the 2-point row, "errors in sentence structure and language use build up"; in the 4-point row, "sentence variety, appropriate word choice" (B's relative clause).
2. Describing the problem. A "The book is very bad, many page is missing." → B "I found that pages 45 to 60 was missing." A blurs what the problem is with "very bad" and also gets subject-verb agreement wrong. B states which pages, but we deliberately left in one agreement error (pages … was). Lines it falls under: in the 2-point row, "insufficient development"; in the 4-point row, "few errors".
3. Why the book is needed this week. A "I need it because I have exam." → B connects the Friday lab report deadline with the content of the missing chapter. A passes over the second item of the task in a single phrase. Lines it falls under: in the 2-point row, "development that is insufficient or unrelated to the purpose"; in the 4-point row, "development that is enough to support the purpose".
4. The request. A "Please give me new book fast." → B "Could you let me know what I should do?" plus a sentence saying when B can exchange the book. The task asks the writer to ask what to do, but A turned this into a demand for a new book, fast. A's problem lies less in grammar than in the way the request is put forward. Lines it falls under: in the parentheses of the 5-point row, "politeness, the way a request is put forward"; in the 3-point row, "noticeable errors in conventions".
5. Opening and closing. A "Hello." and "Thank you." → B "Dear Library Staff,", "Thank you for your help." and "Best regards,". The recipient is library staff, so B matches the register to them. Line it falls under: in the 4-point row, "mostly appropriate social conventions".

Where B falls short of the 5-point row is the agreement error we left in, and sentences that run in the same pattern, such as "because …, and …" (our view). The 5-point row describes a response with almost no errors beyond common typos and with effective sentence variety. The sample answer in the Test Overview also received 4 points, and the ETS scoring commentary says its verb tense problems were serious enough to keep it from a 5 (Test Overview, page 15, checked 2026-10-30).

This article does not show a separate 5-point answer. The recipient and the things to do change from task to task, so our view is that a single answer is hard to use as a model.

Can I memorize a template and use it?

"You can use a basic structure, but the wording should be your own. If memorized sentences do not fit the task, you can lose points." That is the position of Unlock Prep, while industry guides split three ways: in favor, structure only, or optional.

Two rows of the ETS scoring guide touch on this position. The 1-point row describes a response with little language of the writer's own, where most of what makes sense is borrowed from the situation text in the task (the stimulus). The 0-point row includes a response that copies the prompt in full (ETS Writing Scoring Guide, checked 2026-10-30). In our view, memorized openings and closings can fall under the social conventions line if their register does not match the recipient (a professor, a staff member, or a friend).

What is not in the ETS documents we checked?

We did not find the following three things in the Test Overview, the scoring guide, the Specifications Document, or the Technical Manual (checked 2026-10-30).

• How many words to write. The directions only say to write as much as you can in complete sentences. The Technical Manual gives the number of sentences as one example of a feature the engine looks at, but it gives no standard length. We did not compare word count recommendations from industry articles in this article.
• How many points you lose if you leave out one of the three items in the task. The scoring guide does not set scores by the number of items; it describes them by how well the development supports the purpose.
• How much weight the AI scoring gives each of the four lines. The Technical Manual gives only examples of features, not their weights. How to read AI feedback against these four lines is covered in "What should you look for in TOEFL Writing AI feedback?".

The method for turning task scores into the Writing 1 to 6 bands has been described, but the conversion table has not been published. The Technical Manual says the Writing raw score total (Build a Sentence 0 to 10, Write an Email 0 to 5, Write for an Academic Discussion 0 to 5, for a total of 0 to 20; PDF page 30, Table 2) is converted to a scale score for each test form through weighted equipercentile linking, a procedure that adjusts for small differences in difficulty between test forms so that the same scale score means the same ability (PDF page 35).