Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 12 · 2026-09-28

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 5.5)

The bar chart compares the proportion of people in the united states who ate at fast food restaurants in 2003,2006 and 2013,based on six frequency categories ranging from every day never.

Overall, the most frequent habit were eating fast food once a week and once a twice month, whereas eating every day and never eating were the common in all three years. While the percentage of people eating fast food severl time a week few time a year saw a slight increase , the figures for the most common categories remained large stable.

In 2003, around 27%of americans ate fast food once a week and the same proportion ate once twice a month. In 2006, once a week remained at about 27%but once a twice a month of dropped to 25% . By 2013,both categories recoverd to b27% each making them jointly the most popular frequency. The catogory of several times a week the third largest, starting 17% in 2003, peaking at 20% in 2006, then falling to 16% in 2013.

The less frequent categories accounted for a smallar share. In 2003. 12% of people ate fast food a few times a years, which increased to 14%in both 2006 and 2013.At the bottom of the chart , only about 4%of respondent ate fast food every day in 2003, Similarly , the proportion who never ate fast food stood ate 4%in 2003 dropped to around 3%in the later two years.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.0

The response successfully covers all parts of the task by reporting the main features and making relevant comparisons across the given years. The overview captures the overall trends accurately, noting that the most frequent habits remained relatively stable. However, there are some inaccuracies in the reported figures when compared to the visual data (for instance, stating that 27% ate fast food once a week in 2003 when the chart shows approximately 31%). Despite these minor data-reading discrepancies, the student adequately addresses the prompt, selects key categories, and structures the response to present a clear summary of the information provided in the bar chart.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

The essay presents a coherent overall arrangement with a clear logical progression from an introductory overview to body paragraphs detailing specific frequencies. Paragraphing is used appropriately to separate different categories of data. Cohesive devices are generally present, such as 'Overall', 'While', and 'In 2003', though some transitional phrasing feels a bit mechanical or is hampered by minor referencing errors (e.g., 'once a twice month'). Nevertheless, the flow of information is easy to follow, and the relationships between ideas remain clear throughout the text.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

The student demonstrates an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, successfully employing terms related to data reporting such as 'proportion', 'percentage', 'category', 'peaking', and 'falling'. There are, however, several lexical errors and awkward collocations, such as 'severl time a week few time a year', 'once a twice month', and 'recoverd to b27%'. While these spelling and word-choice errors do not impede overall communication, they prevent the response from achieving a higher band score, as less common lexical items are either imprecise or incorrectly formed.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.5

The writing displays a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, utilizing structures like subordinate clauses introduced by 'while' and 'whereas'. There are, however, frequent grammatical and punctuation errors throughout the text, including missing prepositions (e.g., 'ranging from every day never'), punctuation omissions (e.g., missing spaces after commas), and tense or agreement issues ('habit were', 'of dropped', 'respondent ate'). Although these errors rarely impede the reader's understanding of the data, their frequency demonstrates a lack of consistent control over complex structures.

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