TOEFL Email Task — Band 5 Sample Response (Roommate Issue)

About the daily-life Email register

Most published TOEFL Email samples sit in an academic frame: a professor announcing a policy change, a TA shifting a lab time, a research supervisor asking about a topic. The daily-life version of the prompt swaps that hierarchy for a peer relationship, and the register has to follow. A reply to a roommate that opens with "Dear Priya" or signs off "Yours sincerely" reads as stiff and over-formal, and rubric scorers penalise that mismatch the same way they penalise an over-casual reply to a professor.

What does not change is the task itself. You still need to greet the sender, address every point they raised, and commit to a concrete plan rather than a vague "let me know what you think". A peer-to-peer email is warmer and a little looser, but it still has to do real work: name the issue, propose two specific terms, and close in a way that lets the other person say yes or push back. The samples below on policy-change and lab-schedule prompts show the same three moves in a more formal register, so reading them side by side is a good way to feel the register slider.

Prompt

You receive the following email from your roommate.

Subject: the late-night calls thing

Hey,

I have been meaning to bring this up for a couple of weeks and a text felt weird, so here goes. The video calls you take in the room after about 11 are bleeding through pretty badly. The wall between our beds is thin and I have an 8 AM seminar four days a week, so I am usually trying to be asleep by then.

I do not want to make this a big deal and I know the calls are with family on a different time zone. Could you write back with what would actually work for you? I am happy to be flexible if there is a fix that is not just "stop doing it".

Cheers,
Priya

Instructions: Write a reply of 100-150 words. Acknowledge the issue, propose a concrete compromise with at least two specific terms, and close in a friendly peer register.

Sample response

Hey Priya,

Thanks for raising this rather than just stewing on it. You are completely right that the late calls are louder than I realised, and I am sorry for the broken sleep before your 8 AM seminars.

Here is what I think would actually work. From Sunday to Thursday I will move any call after 10:30 PM to the small study room on our floor, which is empty most evenings. On weekends I will keep them in the room but cap them at 11:30 and use headphones with a mic so it is one-sided audio at most. If a family emergency comes up midweek I will text you first so you can put earplugs in.

Does that feel fair? Happy to adjust the times if Sunday nights are tight for you too.

Aarav

Rubric breakdown

What works in this response

• The first line thanks Priya for raising the issue rather than getting defensive. Examiners reward responses that accept the framing of the original email instead of arguing with it.
• The apology is short and specific ("sorry for the broken sleep before your 8 AM seminars") rather than performative. A long, heavy apology in a peer email reads as awkward and pulls the register too high.
• The plan splits weekdays and weekends, which is a small structural choice that signals real thought. A single blanket rule ("no calls after 10") would also work, but the split version shows you can hold two cases at once, a band 5 move.
• The closing question ("Does that feel fair?") is in Priya's register, not a formal "Please advise". It lets her counter without losing face if Sunday nights are also tight.
• No "Dear", no "Yours sincerely", and no emoji or "lol" either. The reply lives in the same register band as the prompt, which is exactly what the rubric is asking for on a daily-life task.

How peer-to-peer differs from professor emails

If you read this reply next to our band 5 lab-schedule sample (a TA email) and the band 5 policy-change sample (a professor email), three differences jump out. First, the greeting and sign-off shift: "Hey Priya" and a bare first name replace "Hi Daniel" and "Best", and both replace "Dear Professor". Second, the apology is shorter and more direct, because over-apologising to a peer reads as odd. Third, the request for confirmation drops its formality: "Does that feel fair?" replaces "Could the lab plan to start with the safety briefing?" which itself replaced the more formal "Could you confirm" of a professor reply.

What stays constant across all three is the spine of the task. You still acknowledge, still propose a concrete plan with two named terms, and still close in a way that invites the next move. If you compare with the lower bands, the band 3 policy-change sample drops the concrete plan and the band 4 group-project sample commits to a plan but skips a real reason, which is what holds them below band 5. The band 6 research-topic sample shows the next step up, where a small concession or rhetorical move adds polish on top of the band 5 spine.

How to push higher

At band 5 on a peer prompt the upside is small. The one optimisation worth trying is a slightly more idiomatic concession in the second paragraph, something like "happy to flip the cutoff to 10 if 10:30 still bleeds through". That keeps the register peer-level while showing the rubric a willingness to renegotiate, which is the headline move at band 6 on this prompt type.

Common mistakes at lower bands on this prompt

Band 3 replies on a roommate prompt typically miss the register entirely, opening with "Dear Priya" and signing off "Sincerely", which sounds odd to a roommate and tells the rubric you cannot read the relationship in the prompt. Band 4 replies fix the register but skip the concrete plan, offering only "I will try to be quieter" with no times, no rooms, and no emergency clause. The single biggest band-3-to-band-5 move on a daily-life email is naming two specific terms in the compromise, because that is what turns a friendly reply into a usable plan that Priya can say yes or no to. For a wider walk-through of register, see our guide to writing the TOEFL Email task and our broader 2026 Writing tips. To map a band 5 to a CEFR level and a section score, the 1-6 scoring system explainer and the band-to-CEFR table are the two posts to keep open while you self-mark.

Compare with other Email samples

• Email task — Band 5 sample (lab schedule, TA register)
• Email task — Band 5 sample (grading-scheme change, professor register)
• Email task — Band 6 sample (research topic)
• Email task — Band 4 sample (group project)
• Email task — Band 3 sample (with critique)
• All TOEFL Writing samples