Band 6.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.5 · Cambridge IELTS 15 · 2026-10-04

IELTS Writing Task 1 question

A museum near your home is looking for people to do part-time voluntary/unpaid work. You would like to do some voluntary/unpaid work at the museum. Write a letter to the museum director to apply for the voluntary/unpaid work. In your letter

• explain why you want to do voluntary/unpaid work at the museum
• describe some skills and qualities you have that would be useful
• give details of when you would be available for work

You do NOT need to write any addresses.

Begin your letter as follows:

Dear Sir or Madam,

Student answer (Band 6.5)

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing to you to express my interest to do voluntary work at the museum.

Being a history student, I feel that a museum is the right environment for me to learn more about my field. By doing voluntary work at the museum, I will be able to help serve our community and also learn from the team at the museum about history and its effect on humans.

I believe that I will be a good fit to volunteer at the museum as I take my field of work very seriously and I am very attentive and physically active. This in my opinion would be sufficient for me to become a positive part of the team.

I am available throughout the week with the exception of the weekends as I am busy in my music classes on saturday and sunday.

Please feel free to write to me with your decision.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours faithfully,

Ali Zaheer

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.5

You successfully address all three bullet points required in the prompt. You explain your motivation to do voluntary work by stating that you are a history student wanting to learn more about your field and serve the community. You describe your skills and qualities, mentioning that you are attentive, physically active, and take your work seriously. You also provide your availability during the week. However, while all parts are covered, some ideas show a tendency toward under-development. For instance, your explanation of your skills relies on general adjectives rather than concrete examples from past experiences. To reach a higher level, you need to fully develop your ideas by expanding on how your specific background or attributes would practically benefit the museum's daily operations.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 7.0

Your letter demonstrates a clear logical organisation and progression throughout. Each paragraph serves a distinct purpose, moving smoothly from your purpose in writing, to your reasons, your personal qualities, your availability, and finally a polite sign-off. You manage paragraphing sufficiently and appropriately, keeping related ideas together in clear blocks. Cohesive devices are used adequately to guide the reader, such as using 'Being a history student' to link cause and effect, and 'By doing voluntary work' to show purpose. To move further up, you could incorporate a wider variety of advanced cohesive phrases and ensure that referencing between sentences is even tighter, avoiding any slight mechanical feel in how paragraphs transition.

Lexical Resource: Band 6.0

You use an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, successfully communicating your message with terms like 'environment', 'community', 'attentive', and 'physically active'. There are some attempts at less common vocabulary, such as 'express my interest', but occasional minor inaccuracies in word choice or collocation appear, such as writing 'interest to do' instead of 'interest in doing'. Your spelling is accurate throughout, and vocabulary errors do not impede communication. To achieve a higher lexical band, you should aim for greater precision and flexibility, incorporating less common lexical items and natural collocations, such as 'gain hands-on experience' or 'contribute meaningfully', rather than relying on straightforward everyday phrasing.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 7.0

You demonstrate good control of grammar and punctuation, providing a mix of simple and complex sentence forms. You successfully handle complex structures, such as participial phrases ('Being a history student, I feel that...') and conditional-like or prepositional framing ('By doing voluntary work...'). There are some minor grammatical slips, such as the preposition choice in 'busy in my music classes' rather than 'busy with', and capitalization lapses like 'saturday and sunday'. Nevertheless, these errors rarely impede communication and you produce frequent error-free sentences. To reach the highest bands, you would need to exhibit a wider range of sophisticated structures consistently with near-total accuracy across all complex grammatical patterns.

See this exact question answered at other band scores. The same prompt compared across bands.

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