Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 12 · 2026-10-01

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 given chart illustrates the frequency of eating at fast food restaurants among people in the USA ([redacted phone]).

Heading towards 2003, 4% people ate fast food daily while 17% of the people ate several times a week. 31% of the population had fast food once a week. There were 30% people who had junk food once or twice a month. 13% of the people had junk food a few times a year while 5% from the whole USA never had junk food.

In 2006, 2.5% had fast food everyday while 20% had several times a week. 32% had fast food once a week whereas 25% of the total had fast food once or twice a month. 15% had fast food a few times a year while 4% never had it.

In 2013, 2.5% had fast food everyday while 16% had several times a week. 27% of them had fast food once a week while 32% had once or twice a month. There were 15% of the people who had fast food a few times a year while 4% never had it.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 4.5

The response addresses the task only partially because it completely lacks an overall summary or overview of the main trends shown in the chart. Instead, the writer jumps straight into detailing individual data points for each year in a mechanical block-by-block fashion. While some figures are reported, such as "4% people ate fast food daily" in 2003, there is no meaningful comparison made across the years or categories to highlight significant patterns, such as the peak in eating once a week or the shift over the decade. This narrow, list-like approach limits the development of ideas and prevents the response from fully meeting the requirements of the prompt.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

There is some basic organisation, with the text broken into paragraphs representing different years, but the response lacks a clear overall progression. Transitions between sentences and paragraphs feel disjointed and repetitive, often relying on formulaic time markers like "Heading towards 2003," "In 2006," and "In 2013" rather than sophisticated cohesive devices or logical referencing. Paragraphing is attempted, but because there is no introduction or overview paragraph, the structural layout is incomplete. Cohesive devices are inadequate and mechanical, making the flow bumpy and causing the reader to navigate isolated statements rather than a cohesive report.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

The lexical resource used is limited and minimally adequate for the task. The vocabulary is overly repetitive, with phrases like "had fast food," "junk food," and "people" appearing constantly throughout the text (e.g., "ate fast food daily," "had fast food once a week," "had junk food once or twice a month"). There are noticeable inaccuracies in word choice and phrasing, such as "Heading towards 2003" which is an inappropriate collocation for a baseline year in a chart. While the meaning is generally communicated, the lack of variety and occasional awkward word choices restrict the range of vocabulary displayed.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.5

The response demonstrates a limited range of sentence structures, relying heavily on simple subject-verb-object patterns to list statistics (e.g., "31% of the population had fast food once a week" and "15% had fast food a few times a year"). When the writer attempts slightly more complex structures or prepositional phrases, they often result in awkward phrasing or minor grammatical slips. There are frequent repetitive patterns in clause construction, and punctuation is basic. Although the errors do not severely impede overall communication, the lack of structural variety and the persistence of repetitive syntactical templates keep the writing at this level.

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