Band 6.0 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.0 · Cambridge IELTS 19 · 2026-09-28

IELTS Writing Task 1 question

You would like to reduce your working hours in order to study part time.

Write a letter to your boss. In your letter

• explain why you want to reduce your working hours
• say which hours you would like to work
• describe how your part-time studies would benefit your employer

You do NOT need to write any addresses.

Begin your letter as follows:

Dear ....................................,

Student answer (Band 6.0)

Dear Sir / Madam,

Fistly, I would like to thank you for giving me this opportinuity working in your company. Its been almost an year I have been working with you. I have recently enrolled in a course that related to Cloud computing, which will help me in updating my knowledge and provides me an extra benifit in my resume. However, managing the course and work is bit challaging for me these days. I request you to please decrease my shifts. So, I will be able to balance both together.

Moving-forward I have class from morning 7am to 5pm. Now I am avaible for night shifts. As I use to work in night, I am well known about all the roles and responsibilities for a night shift. Lastly, our company have few employees in IT department, once my studies are done I can help IT team parallely managing my own work. Which will save company's time and money investing on a new employee.

Hope you condider my request. Looking forward to hear from you.

Your faithfully,

Mirza

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 7.0

The candidate successfully covers all parts of the prompt. First, the letter explains the reason for reducing hours: enrolling in a cloud computing course to update knowledge and improve the resume. Second, it specifies the desired hours, stating availability for night shifts from 7am to 5pm (though there is a slight confusion in terminology between morning and night, the intent is clear). Finally, it describes how the studies benefit the employer, explaining that the candidate can assist the IT team after finishing the course, thereby saving the company time and money on hiring new staff. The tone is appropriate for a formal letter to a boss. Overall, the bullet points are fully addressed, warranting a solid band score for this criterion.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.0

The letter is organised into clear paragraphs with a logical progression from stating the problem and request, to proposing the solution, and finally concluding. The writer uses basic cohesive devices such as 'Fistly', 'However', 'Moving-forward', and 'Lastly' to structure the letter. However, some of these transitions are used slightly unnaturally (e.g., 'Moving-forward') and referencing is occasionally faulty, such as in the sentence fragment 'Which will save company's time and money'. Paragraphing is used appropriately, but overall cohesion has minor mechanical flaws that place it firmly in the band 6 category.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

The student uses an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, successfully incorporating terms related to employment and education, such as 'enrolled', 'knowledge', 'resume', and 'IT department'. However, there are multiple spelling and word choice errors throughout the response, including 'opportinuity' instead of opportunity, 'Its been almost an year' instead of It has been almost a year, 'challaging' instead of challenging, 'avaible' instead of available, and 'benifit' instead of benefit. While these errors do not impede overall communication, they demonstrate limitations in lexical control that prevent the score from reaching a higher band.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.5

The writer attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, such as 'I have recently enrolled in a course that related to Cloud computing, which will help me...' and 'once my studies are done I can help IT team parallely managing my own work.' However, there are frequent grammatical errors and punctuation issues, including subject-verb agreement problems ('our company have few employees'), missing articles ('save company's time'), incorrect prepositions, and sentence fragments ('Which will save company's time and money investing on a new employee.'). Punctuation at the end of the letter ('Your faithfully') is also inaccurate. These errors occasionally cause difficulty for the reader.

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