Band 4.0 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 4.0 · Cambridge IELTS 17 · 2026-09-18

IELTS Writing Task 1 question

The chart below gives information about how families in one country spent their weekly income in 1968 and in 2018.

Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.

1968 and 2018: average weekly spending by families

Student answer (Band 4.0)

The line chart show the information about how families in one country spending there weekly income also give a comparison between 1968 to 2018 one my prospective the chart show the information about what kind of things a family purchase for their home.

overall it can bi observe that the first two things food and housing have 35% income just spend in food times it's also higher than to the other things housing have just 19% per week so on the other hand clothing 10% and fuel an power 6% in a week.

Furthermore other thing also higher than to the

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 4.0

The response is severely under-length, containing only 101 words compared to the required minimum of 150 words. Additionally, it misidentifies the visual prompt in the opening sentence ('The line chart show...'), as the source is clearly a bar chart. While the writer attempts to mention a couple of data points (such as food at 35% and housing at 19%), the overall report is incomplete, lacks a proper overview of main trends, and tails off abruptly mid-sentence ('Furthermore other thing also higher than to the...'). Because the response fails to meet the word count requirement and leaves the task largely incomplete, it falls into the lower bands.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 4.0

The text suffers from poor overall organization and a lack of clear progression. The response is broken into a very disjointed introduction and a single fragmented paragraph that mixes multiple data points without logical sequencing. Cohesive devices are either missing, repetitive, or misused (e.g., 'on the other hand' is used incorrectly to transition between unrelated categories). Furthermore, the lack of proper punctuation and the fact that the text trails off incomplete at the end heavily disrupt the flow, making it very difficult for the reader to follow the train of thought.

Lexical Resource — Band 4.5

The vocabulary used is very basic, repetitive, and restricted. The writer relies on simple, imprecise terms like 'things' and 'other thing' repeatedly. There are noticeable word choice and spelling errors, such as writing 'spending' instead of 'spend', 'bi' instead of 'be', and 'prospective' instead of 'perspective'. While the basic topic of family income and spending is introduced, the limited range of vocabulary and frequent lexical inaccuracies mean the response cannot achieve a higher score.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 4.0

Grammatical control is weak throughout the response. The text is characterized by a complete lack of punctuation, run-on sentences, and basic subject-verb agreement errors (e.g., 'The line chart show' instead of 'shows', 'families... spending there weekly income' instead of 'spent'). Complex structures are absent, and simple sentences are frequently malformed or incomplete. The high frequency of grammatical errors causes significant difficulty for the reader and obscures the intended meaning.

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

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