Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 17 · 2026-10-03

IELTS Writing Task 1 question

Your English-speaking friend who lives in your town has asked for your advice about learning a new sport. Write an email to your friend. In your email:

• recommend a new sport that would be suitable for your friend to learn
• explain how your friend could learn this sport
• suggest that you both learn this sport together

You do NOT need to write any addresses.

Begin your letter as follows:

Dear ....................................,

 

Student answer (Band 5.5)

dear sunaina,

i hope you will be doing great. i had recieved your email and i would love to suggest a new sport which you can learn.

i would recommend you to learn a football sport as it is easy to learn so you do not have to spend much money and time to learn it. As you are working full time so you have a couple hours in the evening if you want to learn something new.

i think football is the kind of sport which will make you more athletic as it requires a lot of running and great stimina to be in a game. Running helps us to stay in shape and fit. moreover it helps the one to build stamina and concentation, as one always has to have focused through the game to win.

luckily we had played this sport in our childhood. at that time we were not aware of the benefits one can get by playing this sport.

looking forward to join with you to learn new skill.

see you soon,

parwinder

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.0

The response addresses the main purpose of the email by recommending football, explaining how to learn it by considering time and cost, and suggesting learning it together. However, some ideas are limited and under-developed. For instance, the explanation of how your friend could learn the sport is quite basic, relying simply on stating that your friend has a couple of hours in the evening. Furthermore, the suggestion to learn together is somewhat implied rather than fully extended, appearing briefly as 'looking forward to join with you to learn new skill.' While the email format and tone are generally appropriate for writing to a friend, the partial development of ideas and limited support keep the response at this level.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

There is some organisation in the letter, with basic greetings and sign-offs, and an attempt to group ideas into paragraphs. However, there is a lack of clear overall progression between the ideas, making the flow feel slightly disjointed. Cohesive devices are sometimes used, such as 'moreover' and 'as', but their application is at times repetitive or slightly inaccurate, such as using 'As' to start consecutive sentences ('As you are working...'). Paragraphing is also somewhat basic, with body points grouped together rather than clearly separated into distinct functional sections. Referencing is occasionally unclear, which prevents the writing from achieving a smoother and more logical structure throughout.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

The vocabulary used is limited but minimally adequate to convey the message about learning a sport. There are noticeable lexical errors, such as 'a football sport' (redundancy) and 'great stimina' (spelling error for stamina), as well as 'concentation' (spelling error for concentration) and 'join with you' (inappropriate collocation). Word choices like 'recieved' (spelling) also appear. While the student attempts some less common vocabulary items such as 'athletic' and 'stamina', the frequency of spelling and word-choice errors causes some difficulty for the reader and prevents the response from reaching a higher band.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.5

The text demonstrates a limited range of grammatical structures, relying heavily on simple sentences and basic complex forms. Attempts at more complex structures are often faulty, such as in the clause 'as one always has to have focused through the game' or 'i hope you will be doing great.' There are frequent errors in verb forms, tenses, and articles, such as 'i had recieved your email' (incorrect past perfect usage) and 'to learn new skill' (missing article 'a'). Punctuation and capitalization are also weak, with a total lack of capital letters for the pronoun 'i' and at the beginning of sentences, which causes distraction and difficulty for the reader.

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