Band 6.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.5 · Cambridge IELTS 12 · 2026-09-13

IELTS Writing Task 1 question

The chart below shows how frequently people in the USA ate in fast food restaurants between 2003 and 2013.

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

 

Student answer (Band 6.5)

The bar chart illustrates the consumption of fast food in restaurants among Americans in 2003, 2006 and 2013.

Overall, it can be seen that people who consumed fast food once a week and once or twice a month is largest, while the least percentage of consumption of fast food on daily basis had been recorded.

Majority of the Americans ate fast food once a week or once or twice a month. People consuming fast food once a week in 2003 were just over 25%, while in 2006 its consumption increased before decreasing significantly among 27% of people. However, the percentage of people eating fast food were 30% at the beginning of the period and increased substantially to 33% by the end.

Notably, the percentages of people eating fast food everyday and never were almost same, with almost 4-5% in 2003, decreased by 1 percentage point in the following year and eventually ended up at 2% and 4% respectively.

The proportions of people ate fast food several times a week increased substantially from 17% to 20% in 2006, declining to just over 15% by 2013, whereas the proportion consuming a few times a year rose from almost 13% to 15% in 2006 and remained stable by the end of the period.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 7.0

The response successfully covers all parts of the task by outlining the main trends and making relevant comparisons across the years 2003, 2006, and 2013. The overview accurately identifies that eating fast food once a week or once/twice a month was most common, while daily consumption was the lowest. Key data points, such as the peak of 33% for monthly consumers and the figures for daily and never categories, are appropriately reported and compared. While there are a few minor generalisations or slight data inaccuracies in parsing specific percentages, the overall reporting is clear, well-structured, and fully satisfies the requirements of Academic Task 1.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 7.0

The response demonstrates a clear logical organisation and progression throughout. Information is grouped reasonably into paragraphs, with an effective introduction, an overview paragraph, and detailed body paragraphs examining different frequency brackets. Cohesive devices such as 'Overall', 'However', 'Notably', and 'whereas' are used to connect ideas, though referencing can occasionally be slightly clunky (e.g., 'the percentages of people eating fast food everyday and never were almost same'). Paragraphing is used sufficiently and appropriately to structure the response, ensuring a clear flow of information from start to finish.

Lexical Resource — Band 6.5

The student uses a sufficient range of vocabulary for the task, allowing for some flexibility and precision with terms like 'consumption', 'proportion', 'substantially', and 'significantly'. There are some less common items attempted with general awareness of style and collocation, such as 'increased substantially' and 'remained stable'. However, occasional word choice and phrasing errors occur, such as 'is largest' instead of 'was the largest' and 'eating fast food everyday and never were almost same'. Despite these minor inaccuracies, the lexical range is adequate to convey the data clearly without impeding communication.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 6.0

The response incorporates a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, utilizing relative clauses and subordinate structures successfully (e.g., 'people who consumed fast food once a week...'). There are good attempts at varied sentence openings. However, several grammatical errors persist, such as subject-verb agreement issues ('people who consumed fast food... is largest', 'the percentage of people eating fast food were 30%'), and minor preposition or tense slips ('in the following year' instead of 'by the following survey year'). These errors do not impede communication, but their frequency prevents the score from reaching a higher band.

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