Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 19 · 2026-09-18

IELTS Writing Task 1 question

You are a member of an International Students' club. The club is organising an event to celebrate popular food from around the world.

Write a letter to the event organiser, Luis. In your letter

• offer to make a popular dish from your country
• describe what this dish is
• explain why it should be included in the event

You do NOT need to write any addresses.

Begin your letter as follows:

Dear Luis,

Student answer (Band 5.5)

Hi Louis,

I hope this letter finds you well, the Intention of this letter to add the famous dish from my country in the upcoming event on October 20th, 2026.

As I know that, We have members in our club all around world and we are adding different kind of cuisines in event, I would request you to add the most popular dish from Punjab, India- Sarso ka Saag and Makki di roti.

This dish is famous due to richess of green leafy Curry. This made of lattace, mustard leafs.

First boil these all together and remove the excess water, after add little bit corn flour to absorb the water from leaves and make the texture thick. Adding to this, cut onion, garlic, ginger, thai chili and some cumin sseds, spices and roast in the hot oil. At the end mix all together and for the Flat bread, only Corn flour is needed.

The Purpose of this cuisine adding in this event to promote the taste of the country.

Best Regards,

Suman

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 6.0

The response successfully covers all three bullet points of the prompt. You begin by offering to make a popular dish from your country, specifically naming 'Sarso ka Saag and Makki di roti' from Punjab, India. You then attempt to describe the dish, explaining that it is made of green leafy curry, mustard leaves, and corn flour. Finally, you explain why it should be included in the event, stating that your purpose is to 'promote the taste of the country' and share it with members from around the world. Although the description of the recipe is somewhat informal and written as a set of direct instructions, all requirements of the task are adequately addressed with relevant ideas.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 5.0

The letter is generally coherent and follows an understandable overall arrangement. However, paragraphing is weak, as the entire body of the letter is compressed into a single dense block of text rather than being divided into logical paragraphs for the greeting, the offer, the recipe description, and the justification. Cohesive devices are sometimes faulty or mechanical, such as the run-on sentence in the second paragraph ('As I know that, We have members...') and the awkward transitional phrase 'Adding to this'. Referencing and logical progression could be significantly improved with better punctuation, clearer sentence boundaries, and appropriate paragraph breaks.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.0

The vocabulary used is adequate for the task, allowing you to successfully name ingredients and describe a cooking process ('green leafy Curry', 'mustard leafs', 'corn flour', 'onion, garlic, ginger'). However, there are noticeable lexical and spelling errors that detract from the quality, such as 'richess' instead of richness, 'lattace' instead of lettuce, 'leafs' instead of leaves, and 'sseds' instead of seeds. You attempt less common vocabulary items like 'absorb' and 'texture', but overall the range is limited and basic, with occasional word-choice inaccuracies that reflect a restricted command of collocation and spelling.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.0

The response features a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, but control over grammar and punctuation is inconsistent. There are several noticeable errors, such as comma splices and run-on sentences ('I hope this letter finds you well, the Intention of this letter to add...'). Grammatical omissions are also present, such as missing articles and auxiliary verbs ('This made of lattace', 'after add little bit corn flour'). Additionally, the greeting contains a minor name discrepancy ('Hi Louis' compared to the prompt's 'Luis'). While these errors do not completely impede communication, they occur frequently enough to pull the grammar score down to the Band 5 level.

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

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