Band 5.0 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.0 · Cambridge IELTS 16 · 2026-09-29

IELTS Writing Task 1 question

The diagram below shows the manufacturing process for making sugar from sugar cane.

Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.

How sugar is produced from sugar cane

Student answer (Band 5.0)

The diagram illustrates the process for producing sugar from sugar cane.

Overall, there are seven main stages for sugar. Starting with the growing and ending with the drying and cooling a sugar.

Initially, sugar canes is grown for 12-18 months. Once the sugar cane is matured, it is harvested through manually or either machine. After complete the harvesting, the sugar canes is crushed and extract the juice. The juice is purified by using the limestone filter to removes the extra particles.

Similarly, purifying juice is heated in a evaporator to juice becomes syrup. The juice is passed to centrifuge to separates sugar crystals from syrup. finally the syrup is dried and cooled and produced the final sugar.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.0

The student successfully identifies the main stages of the sugar manufacturing process, starting from growing and harvesting through to crushing, purifying, evaporating, centrifuging, and finally drying and cooling. However, there are some inaccuracies and awkward phrasing in reporting the steps, such as stating that 'sugar canes is grown' or 'purifying juice is heated in a evaporator'. Furthermore, the response suffers from a significant under-length penalty: the text contains only 117 words, falling well short of the 150-word minimum requirement. This prevents the student from fully developing the description of the process. Consequently, the score is constrained to Band 5.0.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.0

The response has a basic organizational structure with an introductory sentence and some sequence markers such as 'Initially', 'After complete the harvesting', and 'finally'. However, paragraphing is poorly managed, as the text is divided into very short, disjointed blocks rather than cohesive paragraphs representing logical stages of the process. Cohesive devices are sometimes inaccurate or awkward, for instance, 'After complete the harvesting' and 'Similarly, purifying juice'. The overall progression of ideas is present because the process flows chronologically, but the lack of proper paragraphing and mechanical cohesion restricts the score to Band 5.0.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

The student demonstrates an adequate vocabulary for describing a process, incorporating terms such as 'manufacturing process', 'harvested', 'crushed', 'purified', 'evaporator', and 'centrifuge'. However, there are noticeable word-form and lexical errors throughout the text, such as 'is matured' instead of 'matures', 'through manually or either machine' instead of 'either manually or by machine', and 'produced the final sugar' instead of 'producing the final sugar'. While the vocabulary is minimally adequate to communicate the main steps of the process, these errors and the limited range cap the lexical score at Band 5.0.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The text contains a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, but grammatical accuracy is weak. There are frequent errors in subject-verb agreement and tense/voice usage, such as 'sugar canes is grown' (plural noun with singular verb), 'After complete the harvesting' (gerund/infinitive error), and 'to juice becomes syrup' (incorrect clause structure). Punctuation and capitalization are also faulty in places, such as 'finally' starting a sentence with a lowercase letter. Because grammatical errors are frequent and occasionally cause difficulty for the reader, the response warrants a Band 5.0.

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