Band 5.0 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.0 · Cambridge IELTS 12 · 2026-10-31

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 5.0)

The given chart below presents how often people in the USA ate in fast food restaurants between 2003 and 2013.

Overall, the difference between the people who ate in fast food restaurants everyday and the one never did has almost been similar over the years. People eating once a week and the ones eating once or twice a month has also been similar ranging from 25% to approximately 33%. The people who chose to east several times a week are sightly more in percentage compared to the ones who eat few times a year in restaurants.

The people who ate everyday in the year 2006 saw a decline in the coming years in contrast there was an decrease in people who never ate.

The people in 2013 prefered to eat less in fast food restaurants as compared to 2003. The trend shows that the fast food restaurants had a steady increase in demand during the year 2006 thats started to decline nearing 2013.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.0

You identify the chart’s subject and make an attempt at an overview, noting that weekly and monthly dining were the most common frequencies. However, the overview is not consistently accurate: people eating several times a week were not slightly more numerous than those eating a few times a year in every year, and the chart does not show a general rise in demand in 2006 followed by a decline. The final claim that people preferred fast food less in 2013 than in 2003 is also too broad, since monthly eating rose to 33% in 2013. The response gives very few precise comparisons or figures, so key trends remain underdeveloped. Select the main categories and support the overview with accurate data.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 4.5

The response has a basic overall shape: an introduction, an overview, and further comments about changes over time. This gives the reader some sense of the topic, but progression is difficult to follow because the overview and later statements repeat or conflict with one another. For example, the claim that demand increased in 2006 and declined by 2013 is not clearly connected to the preceding comparisons, and the sentence about daily eating and never eating does not explain the relevant figures. Linking is limited, and references such as “the ones” are not always clear. Organise the body around a few categories or years, and use accurate comparisons to connect each point.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

You use enough topic vocabulary to communicate the general subject, including “ate,” “restaurants,” “percentage,” “decline,” and “trend.” There is some variation in phrasing, but the range is limited and several word-choice or spelling errors reduce precision. “Prefered” and “sightly” are misspelled, while “demand” is not a precise description of the percentages of people reporting different eating frequencies. “The ones” is also vague when referring to groups. Use chart-specific language such as “the proportion of people who ate out” and choose verbs that accurately describe the data, such as “rose,” “fell,” or “remained stable.”

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The response attempts some complex sentence forms, including “The people who ate everyday in the year 2006 saw a decline in the coming years in contrast there was an decrease…”. However, this construction is difficult to follow and has faulty punctuation and article use. Agreement errors also occur in “People eating once a week and the ones … has also been similar,” where the plural subject requires “have.” Other problems include “the one never did” and inconsistent tense choices when describing the chart. Most sentences rely on simple patterns, and errors sometimes make relationships between ideas unclear. Practise accurate comparisons and use past-tense reporting consistently, with punctuation separating contrasting clauses.

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