Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 17 · 2026-09-29

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 5.5)

The bar chart illustrate how people had spent their weekly income in various sector in year 1968 and 2018.

Overall, in 1968, the highest amount of money was on food and lowest on fuel and power. In contrast, in 2018, people use most of their wages on leisure while fuel and power and personal goods were the least useage sectors.

In the year 1968, food is the sector where families had use most of thier income with 35% where as clothing and footware and housing are the second highest with 10%. Moreover, transport, personal goods, household goods and leisure were the areas with almost same amount of money spent with almost 8%. Minimal consumation was on fuel and power.

In the year 2018, leisure stand out to be the topmost area for spending money with 22% which were then followed by housing and food with almost same amount by 17%. Transport and household goods stand with 14% and 8% respectively. However, fuel and power, clothing and footware and personal goods were three catagories with same money spend with around 4%.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.0

The student successfully covers all parts of the task by selecting and reporting the main features of the chart, providing a clear overview and making relevant comparisons between 1968 and 2018. The highest and lowest spending categories for both years are identified correctly, such as food dominating in 1968 at 35% and leisure taking the lead in 2018 at 22%. Minor inaccuracies in data interpretation exist, such as stating fuel and power was the lowest in 1968 when it was actually 6% while others were higher, and minor misreadings of categories like clothing and footwear, but overall, the response addresses the prompt effectively with well-selected data points.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

The response is arranged into a logical overall structure consisting of an introduction, an overview paragraph, and two body paragraphs detailing the respective years. Paragraphing is used appropriately to separate the two time periods. However, cohesion is sometimes mechanical or repetitive, relying heavily on transitional phrases like 'In the year 1968' and 'In the year 2018'. Referencing is occasionally slightly unclear with pronoun usage, but the logical flow is maintained throughout, ensuring the reader can easily follow the comparisons made between the two decades.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

The student uses an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, successfully incorporating terms related to financial expenditure such as 'weekly income', 'amount of money spent', and 'sectors'. There are several spelling and word choice errors, such as 'illustrate' instead of 'illustrates', 'footware' instead of 'footwear', 'consumation' instead of 'consumption', and 'catagories' instead of 'categories'. Furthermore, grammatical forms of words are occasionally misused, such as 'use' instead of 'used' or 'spent'. Despite these inaccuracies, the vocabulary is sufficient to communicate the main trends clearly, fitting the Band 6 profile.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.5

The writer attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, utilizing relative clauses and comparative structures. However, there are frequent grammatical errors, particularly regarding tense consistency and subject-verb agreement, such as 'The bar chart illustrate', 'people had spent', 'food is the sector where families had use', and 'which were then followed'. Punctuation is generally acceptable, but basic grammatical slips recur throughout the text. These errors rarely impede overall communication, but they restrict the score to a Band 5.5 because control over complex structures is inconsistent.

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