Band 4.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer
Overall Band Score: 4.5 · Cambridge IELTS 17 · 2026-09-26
IELTS Writing Task 1 question
below shows the value of one country’s exports in various categories during 2015 and 2016. The table shows the percentage change in each category of exports in 2016 compared with 2015.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
Student answer (Band 4.5)
The given table and chart shows information on the police budget from 2017 and 2018 in one British area. The table gives information about the sources of money, while chart illustrates where it was distributed. Overall, total budget increased within the given period. National government was the most significant source of police budget, while local taxes also showed considerable increase. Majority of the budget was spent on salaries in both years. But percentage decreased during the second year. On the other hand, technology sector showed increase.
National government contributed highest amount of money to police budget in both years. It contributed 175.5 million and 177.8 million in 2017 and 2018 respectively. In 2017, local taxes accounted for almost 91.2 million and showed substantial increase in 2018 with 102.3 million . Almost 38 million was given by other sources in 2017 which showed slight increase and reached 38.5 million in 2018. Total budget also rose from 304.7 million to 318.6 million.
On the other hand, how the money was spent is shown through pie chart. In 2017, 75% of the budget was spent on salaries which stepped down to 69% in 2018. The technological sector accounted for 8% of total budget in 2017 and showed a notable increase in 2018 at 14%. Building and transport remained consistent in both years with 17% of the budget spending.
AI examiner evaluation
| Criterion | Band |
|---|---|
| Task Achievement / Task Response | 3.0 |
| Coherence and Cohesion | 5.0 |
| Lexical Resource | 5.0 |
| Grammatical Range and Accuracy | 5.0 |
| Overall | 4.5 |
Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 3.0
The candidate has completely misunderstood the prompt and the visual data provided. Instead of writing about export earnings for petroleum products, engineered goods, gems and jewellery, agricultural products, and textiles in 2015 and 2016, the student hallucinates an entirely different task about a 'police budget from 2017 and 2018 in one British area' with specific figures like 175.5 million and 75% spent on salaries. Because the entire response is based on a fabricated prompt and dataset completely unrelated to the actual image, the response fails to address the prompt properly. According to the task achievement descriptors, this falls well below acceptable standards for an academic report, resulting in a low score.
Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.0
Despite the severe content irrelevance, the text exhibits a clear structural layout with standard paragraphing. The writer attempts to separate the introduction, body paragraphs, and uses basic cohesive devices such as 'Overall', 'On the other hand', and 'In 2017' to guide the reader through the imaginary data. Referencing is generally clear within the student's invented narrative. However, because the foundation of the writing is entirely misplaced, the logical progression suffers in relation to the actual task. Paragraphing is used, but the overall organization cannot salvage the misinterpretation of the visual stimulus.
Lexical Resource: Band 5.0
The student demonstrates an adequate range of vocabulary for general reporting purposes, employing terms such as 'considerable increase', 'substantial increase', 'slight increase', and 'consistent'. There are attempts to use less common vocabulary like 'accounted for' and 'technological sector'. However, word choice and collocations are occasionally awkward, and the overall lexical repertoire is limited and repetitive when describing trends. Spelling and word formation are generally accurate, but the misuse of context due to hallucinating the prompt heavily restricts lexical appropriateness for the specific task.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0
The candidate attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, utilizing relative clauses and introductory prepositional phrases (e.g., 'In 2017, local taxes accounted for...'). There are, however, noticeable grammatical errors, such as missing articles ('chart illustrates where it was distributed', 'showed increase') and minor punctuation slips. While many sentences are grammatically intelligible, the frequency of basic errors combined with the completely imaginary content demonstrates a limited control of complex structures.
See this exact question answered at other band scores. The same prompt compared across bands.
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