Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 12 · 2026-10-14

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 presenting the data of how frequently people of the US ate at a fastfood restaurant over the period of ten years. The figures are given as percentages.

overall, between 2003 and 2013, most percentages of people visited to a fastfood restaurant atleast once a week or atleast once or twice monthly. However, a small proportion of people actually never ate at any fastfood places and same goes for people who visited to the restaurant everyday.

In 2006, the highest proportion of people around 33% ate in a fastfood restaurant once weekly and same percentage of people visited a fastfood restaurant once or twice a month in 2013.

Around 4% of people never went to any fastfood shop in 2003 which number marginally fell to 3% in year of 2006 and 2013.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.0

You identify the chart topic and give a broad overview, noting that daily eating and never eating fast food were uncommon. You also correctly report the peak of about 33% for weekly visits in 2006 and the 33% monthly figure in 2013. However, the response covers only a few of the main comparisons: it omits the notable shift from weekly visits being most common in 2003 and 2006 to monthly visits leading in 2013, and gives little account of the other categories. The statement that most people visited at least weekly or monthly is also imprecise because these are separate frequency groups. The response is 134 words, below the 150-word minimum. Develop the overview and compare more key figures to address the task more fully.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

The response has a recognisable structure: an introduction, an overview, and two paragraphs with selected figures. This makes the main purpose easy to follow, and the time references help organise the information. However, the progression is limited because the final paragraph focuses only on the ‘never’ category, without linking it to the other low-frequency group or to the overall changes. Some connections are repetitive, particularly the repeated use of ‘and same’ to join comparisons. Grouping the data by the most common frequencies and then the less common ones would create a clearer sequence. Use more precise linking and reference, so each paragraph develops a distinct comparison rather than presenting isolated facts.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

You use relevant chart vocabulary such as ‘proportion’, ‘percentages’, and ‘highest’, and the reader can generally understand the categories being discussed. However, the range is limited and several phrases are unnatural or imprecise, including ‘visited to a fastfood restaurant’, ‘fastfood places’, and ‘same percentage of people’. The spelling ‘fastfood’ should be written as ‘fast-food’, while ‘atleast’ should be ‘at least’. Repetition of ‘people’ and ‘fastfood restaurant’ also makes the description less flexible. Aim for accurate collocations such as ‘ate at a fast-food restaurant’ and ‘the share of respondents’, and vary the language used to describe frequency and change.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.5

You attempt both simple statements and longer sentences, and the main figures are usually understandable. However, the opening is a sentence fragment: ‘The bar chart presenting the data…’ needs a main verb, such as ‘The bar chart presents…’. There are also recurring problems with articles, prepositions, and sentence construction, as in ‘visited to a fastfood restaurant’ and ‘in year of 2006 and 2013’. The overview’s ‘most percentages of people’ is not a well-formed grammatical phrase, and the lowercase ‘overall’ after a full stop shows a punctuation and capitalisation issue. Practise complete sentence patterns and check articles and prepositions; greater control would make the comparisons clearer.

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