Letter Thanking Your Friend for His Hospitality

A thank-you letter works backwards from a specific memory: name the visit and when it was, recall one or two particular kindnesses rather than thanking in general, mention the family by role, and return the invitation. Specific detail is what separates a letter that sounds sincere from one that sounds dutiful.

The question: Write a letter to your friend thanking him for his hospitality during your stay.

The format

Establish when, in the first line

Say when you got home. It dates the letter naturally, explains why you are writing now, and gets the opening paragraph moving without a formula.

• Mention the journey briefly if anything happened on it.
• Then say you are writing to thank them properly.

Thank for particular things

General gratitude reads as duty. Two or three specific kindnesses — a room given up, a dish cooked twice, a walk taken before anyone was awake — are what make a thank-you letter convincing.

• Name what each person did, by role.
• Include something you only realised afterwards; it shows you were paying attention.
• 🚨 Thank you for your kind hospitality cannot be the whole content.

Return the invitation

Close by inviting your friend to visit you, with something concrete about what you could offer. It gives the closing paragraph a job beyond repeating the thanks.

Model answer

Model answer (about 165 words)

Dhanmondi, Dhaka

5 September 2026

Dear Rumi,

I reached home on Tuesday evening, later than planned because the ferry queue was enormous, and I have been meaning to write ever since to thank you properly.

Those five days in Srimangal were the best part of my year. Thank you for giving up your own room, which I only realised you had done on the third day when I saw the bedding in the sitting room. Thank you to your mother for the shatkora curry, and for making it a second time when she saw how much of it I ate. And thank you for the morning we walked up to the tea garden before anyone else was awake — I have thought about that walk several times since I got back, usually while sitting in traffic.

It is your turn now. Come to Dhaka in the winter holidays and stay as long as you can. I cannot promise tea gardens, but the room is yours. My regards to your parents and to your grandmother.

Yours ever,

Nusrat

What earns and loses marks

• Thank for particular things, not for hospitality in general. A room given up and a curry cooked twice are worth more than a paragraph saying how kind everyone was.
• Length is not the point — a letter of about 150 words that does the four parts properly beats a rambling 300-word one.
• Keep the tense consistent: a letter about something that happened stays in the past, a letter about a plan stays in the future.
• Ask at least one question of your friend, so the letter reads as one half of a conversation rather than a speech.
• Leave a clear blank line between paragraphs — layout marks are given for what the examiner can see at a glance.

Mistakes to avoid

• ✗ Thank you very much for your kind hospitality. I enjoyed my stay very much. ✓ Thank you for giving up your own room, which I only realised you had done on the third day. — specific gratitude reads as sincere