Band 6.0 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.0 · Barron's Writing · 2026-08-27

IELTS Writing Task 1 question

You have rented a house by a lake for the summer.

Write a letter to a friend. In your letter
• describe the house.
• describe how you are spending your time there.
• invite your friend to come and visit.

You do NOT need to write any addresses.

Begin your letter as follows:

Dear ____

Student answer (Band 6.0)

Dear Dan,

I hope you are doing well. How is your sister's health? I hope she is recovering well. I am writing this letter to inform you that I have gotten an apartment by the lake for the next summer.

In all honesty, the house is very spacious and beautiful, it has two living rooms and five bedrooms with a toilet and bathroom each. The garden is filled with beautiful flowers.

Moreover, I have decided to spend this year summer with my family and my parents. The reason is that my mum and my kids love swimming and kayaking which I believe they would enjoy

I would like you to come and visit us in your leisure time since you are spending your summer in the same city as mine in order to spend some time at the lake together.

Hope to receive a positive reply as per my invite.

Your dear friend,

Sarah.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 6.0

You have addressed all three bullet points of the task: describing the house, explaining your activities, and inviting your friend. The tone is appropriate for a letter to a friend. However, the development of ideas is somewhat limited. For instance, while you mention the house is spacious, providing more sensory details or specific features beyond the number of rooms would have improved the response. Similarly, the invitation is a bit abrupt. To reach a higher band, ensure that each point is expanded with more descriptive language or personal context to fully engage the reader.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 6.5

The letter is logically organized into clear paragraphs, each serving a specific purpose. You use basic cohesive devices such as 'Moreover' and 'In all honesty' to link ideas. However, the flow between sentences could be smoother. Some transitions feel slightly mechanical, and the connection between the description of the house and the activities could be more fluid. The use of referencing is generally clear, but the overall progression of ideas is somewhat straightforward rather than sophisticated. Improving the variety of linking words would enhance the cohesion of the text.

Lexical Resource — Band 6.0

You demonstrate an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, using words like 'spacious', 'leisure', and 'recovering'. However, the vocabulary is somewhat repetitive and lacks the precision or 'less common' items required for higher bands. For example, 'beautiful' is used twice in close proximity. There are also minor issues with collocation, such as 'gotten an apartment' (which is informal and slightly imprecise in this context) and 'as per my invite' (which sounds overly formal/bureaucratic for a letter to a friend). Expanding your range of descriptive adjectives and natural collocations would improve your score.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 6.0

You use a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, which is appropriate for this level. There are some grammatical errors, such as 'this year summer' (should be 'this summer' or 'this year's summer') and 'same city as mine' (which is slightly awkward). Punctuation is generally functional, though there is a missing period after 'beautiful' in the second paragraph, leading to a comma splice. While these errors do not impede communication, they indicate a need for more careful proofreading and a wider variety of error-free complex structures to achieve a higher band.

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

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