Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Barron's Writing · 2026-09-19

IELTS Writing Task 1 question

You have a problem in your apartment that needs repairs.

Write a letter to the building manager. In your letter
• describe the problem.
• say what you think should be done about it.
• ask the building manager to visit your apartment to see the problem.

You do NOT need to write any addresses.

Begin your letter as follows:

Dear _________,

Student answer (Band 5.5)

Dear Mr. Sharma,

I am writing this letter to inform you about the problem in my apartment.

Firstly in the kitchen, the appliances are too old and now they are not working properly as well as in washroom the shower is licking continuesly from last few weeks, and the sound of licking water is realy disturbing specially at night.

And I think you must check and visit my apartment physically and try to understand my problem. Because now its become headach for me, everyday appliances giving me hard time during rush time in the morning.

Specifically stove and oven, which I use oftenly to cook and bake food, but from last week its way too much time too get heated to cook food. I think you take some action to fix this problem As soon as posible and you may purchase new appliances or shower get fixed by the plumber.

I will realy appricate if you take action quickly.

kind regards,

Sahil

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 6.0

The response covers all bullet points required by the task prompt. Sahil successfully describes the apartment problems in both the kitchen and washroom, suggests actionable solutions such as purchasing new appliances or calling a plumber, and explicitly asks the building manager to visit the apartment to witness the issues firsthand. The tone is appropriate for a formal letter to a building manager. Although some details are slightly underdeveloped and the ideas are somewhat clumped together in long, breathless paragraphs, the overall communicative purpose of the letter is fully achieved. The prompt's requirements are satisfied, leading to a solid band score for this criterion.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 5.5

The letter maintains a coherent overall arrangement and follows a logical progression from introduction to problem description, solutions, and a polite closing. However, paragraphing is poorly managed. The body of the letter contains massive blocks of text that bundle multiple distinct issues together without sufficient visual or logical separation. Cohesive devices are occasionally used (e.g., 'Firstly', 'Specifically'), but referencing and linking across sentences can be mechanical or abrupt, such as shifting suddenly between the kitchen appliances and the washroom leak. While the letter is easy enough to follow, these structural shortcomings prevent it from reaching a higher band.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.0

Sahil uses an adequate range of vocabulary to communicate the problems, such as 'appliances', 'plumber', and 'purchase'. However, there are numerous spelling and word-choice errors that detract from the writing, including 'licking' instead of 'leaking', 'continuesly' for 'continuously', 'realy' for 'really', 'specially' for 'especially', 'headach' for 'headache', 'oftenly' for 'frequently', 'posible' for 'possible', and 'appricate' for 'appreciate'. While these errors do not completely impede communication, they are frequent enough to cap the lexical score at this level, demonstrating a limited range with noticeable mechanical slips.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.0

The writer attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, demonstrating some ambition with subordinate clauses (e.g., 'because now its become headach for me'). However, grammatical accuracy is weak. There are frequent errors involving subject-verb agreement, missing articles, incorrect prepositions, and punctuation slips, such as 'appliances giving me hard time' (missing verb), 'from last week its way too much time too get heated', and run-on sentences joined improperly with commas or conjunctions. Although the meaning is generally decipherable, the high frequency of basic structural errors keeps the score at this level.

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

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