Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 19 · 2026-08-21

IELTS Writing Task 1 question

Five months ago, you started renting an apartment on a six-month agreement. You now wish to stay in the apartment for longer than the six months you originally agreed with the owner.

Write a letter to the owner of your apartment. In your letter

• say how long you now want to rent the apartment for
• explain why your plans have changed
• tell the owner about a problem in the apartment

You do NOT need to write any addresses.

Begin your letter as follows:

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

Student answer (Band 5.5)

Dear abdul,

Hope you are doing well. I am writing for requesting extention of lease agreement of apartment from less than 6 months to 10 months.

The main reson to staying longer than agrement, frequency of bus trasporation are more from this prime location of your apartment ,which helps me to save time and boost my acedemic performance. As i can see from my acedemic grade while staying in your place compare with living miles away from college. Last semister are more challenging to me and staying away from this appartment will affect my study.

Apart from this, i admire facillities provide except central cooling system. It would be appeciated if you fix this issue as it is hard to concentrating last night and peak evening times.

Thank you attention this matter

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 5.0

You have addressed all three bullet points: requesting an extension, explaining the reason, and reporting a maintenance issue. However, the letter is significantly under the 150-word minimum, which negatively impacts the development of your ideas. While the purpose of the letter is clear, the explanation regarding your academic performance and the bus transportation could have been expanded to provide a more persuasive and professional tone. Because the response is 18 words short of the requirement, it fails to fully develop the points as expected for a Band 6 or higher.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 6.0

The letter follows a logical structure with a clear opening and closing. Paragraphing is used to separate the request, the explanation, and the maintenance issue. However, the use of cohesive devices is quite limited and sometimes mechanical. For instance, 'Apart from this' is a standard transition, but the connection between sentences within paragraphs is occasionally abrupt. The flow of ideas is generally easy to follow, but the lack of length prevents the development of more sophisticated linking phrases that would elevate the score.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.0

Your vocabulary is adequate for the task but lacks variety and precision. There are several spelling errors, such as 'extention' (extension), 'reson' (reason), 'trasporation' (transportation), 'acedemic' (academic), 'semister' (semester), and 'facillities' (facilities). These errors are frequent and occasionally distract the reader. While you attempt to use topic-specific vocabulary like 'lease agreement' and 'prime location', the overall range is limited, and the persistent spelling mistakes prevent a higher score.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.0

The letter contains a mix of simple and some complex sentence structures, but there are frequent grammatical errors. Examples include 'I am writing for requesting' (should be 'to request'), 'frequency of bus trasporation are' (subject-verb agreement error), and 'it is hard to concentrating' (should be 'to concentrate'). Punctuation is also inconsistent, particularly with capitalization and missing articles. These errors occur throughout the text and, while they do not prevent the message from being understood, they demonstrate a lack of control over basic grammatical rules.

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

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