TOEFL Email Task — Band 5 Sample (Internship Followup)

About the professional register

Professional-domain prompts sit between the two registers most students already practise. They are more formal than a daily-life note to a roommate or a building manager, where first names and contractions are expected, but they are also more concise than the academic-professor variant, where you can lean on full clauses and explicit signposting because the reader is your instructor. In a hiring or coordinator email the reader is busy and is judging you partly on how cleanly you communicate. The voice you want signals confidence and reliability without sounding stiff or corporate. That means a courteous opening that uses the coordinator's surname, contractions used sparingly, every sentence carrying useful information, and a closing that reaffirms enthusiasm in plain language. Compare the model reply below with the one in the roommate-issue sample to see how the same band 5 ceiling reads very differently across the two registers, and with the lab-schedule sample for the academic mid-point.

Prompt

You receive the following email from an internship coordinator after your first-round interview.

Subject: Summer Analyst Internship — next steps after your first interview

Dear Maria,

Thank you again for speaking with our team last Thursday. The hiring committee was impressed with your background, and we expect to finalise the shortlist for second-round interviews early next week.

Before we do, could you confirm two things for me?

  1. Are you still actively interested in the Summer Analyst role with our Markets team?
  2. If we extended an offer, what is the earliest date you could realistically start full-time work this summer?

A short reply by Friday would be very helpful.

Best regards,
Elena Reyes
Internship Coordinator, Northbridge Capital

Instructions: Write a reply of 100-150 words. Confirm continued interest, answer the clarifying question with a specific date and one short supporting detail, and close with a brief reaffirmation.

Sample response

Dear Ms. Reyes,

Thank you for the update, and for the time the committee has already spent on my application. I am very much still interested in the Summer Analyst role with the Markets team. The conversation last Thursday only reinforced that, particularly the section on how the desk handles macro-driven repositioning, which is closest to the work I would most want to learn this summer.

On the start date: I could begin full-time on Monday, 8 June. My final university exam finishes on 29 May, and I have deliberately left the following week clear so that I can relocate to London and complete any onboarding paperwork. An earlier start is possible if the team needs it, but 8 June is the cleanest commitment I can make at this stage.

Thank you again for considering me. I look forward to hearing about the shortlist.

Best regards,
Maria Costa

Rubric breakdown

What works in this response

• Opens with "Dear Ms. Reyes" and closes with "Best regards", register markers that match the coordinator's own email rather than dropping into first-name informality. Mismatched register is one of the easiest band-3 errors on professional prompts. See the Email template guide for the full register decision tree.
• Confirms continued interest in the first paragraph rather than burying it. Examiners reward responses that commit to the lead question early; vague "I am considering my options" answers fail the prompt.
• The supporting detail for continued interest is specific to the interview ("how the desk handles macro-driven repositioning"). This signals that the candidate was paying attention, which is exactly the reliability cue a coordinator wants.
• The start date is given as a concrete Monday with a reason that pre-empts the obvious follow-up question. Anticipating the next question is a band 5 move; see the Writing tips guide for more on this technique.
• Length sits in the middle of the 100-150 target. Going over typically signals padding and risks losing structure, which on a professional prompt reads as poor self-editing.

How professional differs from peer + professor emails

A peer email (the roommate-issue sample) leans on first names, contractions, and small-talk softeners like "I know this is awkward, but". The reader is a co-equal you live with, so warmth and shared context do most of the diplomatic work. A professor email (the lab-schedule sample or the research-topic band 6) sits one notch up: surnames are appropriate but not mandatory, longer sentences are fine because the reader is your instructor, and academic content terms ("cohort", "experimental setup") earn marks rather than feeling out of place.

A professional email is a different beast. The reader is a stranger evaluating you against other candidates, and they are reading on their phone between meetings. So the tone is formal in its surface markers (surname greeting, "Best regards" close, no contractions in the opener) but the structure is ruthlessly compact. Every sentence either advances a commitment, gives a date, or reaffirms enthusiasm. There is no room for the kind of meta-commentary ("I wanted to write because…") that is fine in an academic email. If you have written band 5 academic emails before, the move to professional register is mostly about cutting padding rather than learning new phrasing; see the policy-change sample for the closest academic neighbour, and the band 3 version of the same prompt for the contrast in compactness. Both registers are scored against the same 1-6 scoring system, mapped to CEFR levels in the usual way.