Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Barron's Writing · 2026-09-22

IELTS Writing Task 1 question

You rode in a taxi yesterday. When you got home, you realized you had left your bag in the taxi.

Write a letter to the manager of the taxi company. In your letter
• explain how you lost your bag.
• describe your bag.
• ask the manager to help you find it.

You do NOT need to write any addresses.

Begin your letter as follows:

Dear Sir or Madam,

Student answer (Band 5.5)

Dear Sir,

I hope you are doing well. I am writing this letter to you because i left my important bag in you taxi number 11 after my ride with one of your drivers from Newyork to the town. I came to Newyork for an important meeting and i have some important documents in the bag.

It is a black coloured medium sized bag which is double shaded. I has small water bottle zip on the side.

Can you please help me to find the bag as i really need it as soon as possible. I am flying back to Toronto next Monday. IO will really appreciate you

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 5.0

The student has successfully covered all three bullet points required in the prompt. You explained how the bag was lost by mentioning your taxi ride from New York to town in taxi number 11. You also described the bag as a black-coloured, medium-sized, double-shaded bag with a small water bottle zip on the side, and you asked the manager for help finding it. However, the response is only 108 words long, which severely falls short of the minimum requirement of 150 words. This under-length impacts the full development of ideas. Because the task was only partially developed due to length, a band score of 5.0 is appropriate.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 6.0

The letter maintains a generally coherent structure with an appropriate greeting, a clear statement of purpose, details about the item, and a concluding request. However, the paragraphing is underdeveloped due to the short length of the text, grouping almost all information into a single dense block after the greeting. Cohesive devices are minimal, relying mostly on simple conjunctions like 'and'. Reference pronouns such as 'It is a black coloured medium sized bag' and 'I has small water bottle zip' are mostly clear, but the overall lack of extended cohesive strategies limits the flow. Overall, the organisation shows basic coherence, meriting a band score of 6.0.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.5

The student uses an adequate range of vocabulary suitable for a simple complaint or lost property letter, such as 'important documents', 'medium sized', and 'water bottle'. There are some basic lexical errors and awkward collocations, such as 'you taxi' instead of 'your taxi' and 'i has small water bottle zip' where the verb and preposition choice are imprecise. Spelling is mostly accurate, though proper nouns like 'Newyork' are written as one word. The vocabulary range is sufficient for the task but lacks precision or less common items, justifying a band score of 5.5.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.0

The student attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, such as 'I am writing this letter to you because i left my important bag in you taxi number 11'. There are several noticeable grammatical errors, including failure to capitalise the pronoun 'i' throughout the response, grammatical inaccuracies like 'i has' instead of 'It has', and missing prepositions or articles. Punctuation is also sparse at the end of the final sentence ('I IO will really appreciate you'). Despite these errors, communication is not severely impeded. This demonstrates a limited range with frequent errors, corresponding to a band score of 5.0.

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

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