Band 6.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.5 · Recent IELTS Exams (Canada & India) · 2026-10-08

IELTS Writing Task 1 question

The pie charts below show how working adults in a particular country spent their time in 1958 and 2008.

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

* Note: these aren’t the original diagrams given in the test, they were recreated for the purpose of demonstration.

Student answer (Band 6.5)

The given chart compares how employed adults in a specific nation allocated their time to different activities in 1958 and 2008.

Overall, employed adults spent most of their time working in both years. In 1958, the smallest proportion of time was spent travelling to work whereas in 2008 the least amount of time was devoted to going out with friends and families.

In 1958, working adults allocated most of their time to sleeping, working, and going out with friends, which accounted for 32%, 33%, and 19% respectively. By contrast, in 2008, working was the largest category at 42%, followed by sleeping and relaxing at home, which represented 25% and 13% respectively.

Turning to the remaining activities, the smallest proportion of time was allocated to travelling to work, relaxing at home in 1958, at 2% and 8% respectively, while travelling to work , going out with friends and families, playing sports accounted for just 7%,6%, 7% respectively in 2008.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.0

You identify the main pattern that work took the largest share in both years and accurately report several key figures, including work rising from 33% to 42%, sleep falling from 32% to 25%, and travel increasing from 2% to 7%. The overview also correctly notes the smallest category in each year. However, the account is not fully developed: it does not clearly compare the major changes across the two charts, and the final sentence groups the remaining figures without explaining their shifts. In particular, going out with friends/family fell sharply from 19% to 6%, while relaxing at home rose from 8% to 13%; these are important changes that deserve explicit comparison. The response covers the task, but some features receive less complete treatment than others.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.5

The response has a clear overall structure: an introduction, an overview, and two detail paragraphs. Its progression from the broad pattern to figures for each year is easy to follow, and linking phrases such as “Overall,” “By contrast,” and “Turning to” help signal the organisation. This meets the lower-band expectation of a coherent arrangement and shows some flexibility in connecting ideas. However, the final paragraph compresses several figures into one sentence, making the comparisons less clear; the comma placement around “travelling to work, relaxing at home in 1958” also briefly obscures which values belong to which activities. Organising the details by changes between years, rather than listing categories, would create smoother progression and more precise cohesion.

Lexical Resource: Band 6.5

You use an adequate range of task-appropriate vocabulary, including “allocated,” “proportion,” “accounted for,” and “devoted to.” These choices allow you to describe the chart without excessive repetition, and the meaning is generally clear. Some phrasing is less natural or precise: “employed adults” is understandable but “working adults” more closely matches the chart, while “friends and families” is an awkward plural form for the category “friends/family.” The phrase “smallest proportion of time was allocated to travelling to work, relaxing at home” also makes the category relationship unclear. At this level, vocabulary supports the task, but more accurate collocations and consistent naming of chart categories would improve precision and flexibility.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 6.0

You use a mix of simple and more complex sentence forms, including the contrast in “By contrast, in 2008…” and the relative clause “which accounted for 32%, 33%, and 19% respectively.” Most sentences communicate the intended information, but some grammatical and punctuation errors remain. In the final sentence, the construction “travelling to work , going out with friends and families, playing sports accounted for” lacks clear parallel structure and has an unnecessary space before the comma. The earlier phrase “travelling to work, relaxing at home in 1958, at 2% and 8% respectively” also has a confusing sentence structure. Separating these details into shorter, clearly matched clauses would reduce errors while retaining a useful range of structures.

See this exact question answered at other band scores. The same prompt compared across bands.

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