Band 6.0 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.0 · Cambridge IELTS 17 · 2026-09-30

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 6.0)

The bar chart illustrates the percentage of eight different categories in a country where people consumed thier weekly income between 1968 to 2018.

Overall, spending patterns changed between 1968 and 2018. Spending on food, clothing, fuel and personal goods decreased, while spending on housing, transport and leisure increased. Food was biggest expanse in 1968, whereas leisure was the largest in 2018.

In 1968. families spent about 35% of thier weekly income on foods, compared with approximately 17% in 2018. Spending on clothing and footware also fell from about 10% to 5%. Similarly spending on fuel and power decreased from around 6% to 4%, while personal goods fell from about 8% to 4%.

Turning to categories that increased, leisure show the biggest rise it increase from about 9% in 1968 to around 22% in 2018. Spending on housing also rose from about 10% to 19%, while transport increased from around 8% to 14%.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.5

The student successfully addresses all parts of the prompt by presenting an overview of the main trends and selecting key data from the bar chart. The overview clearly highlights that spending patterns shifted between 1968 and 2018, noting the contrasting directions of decrease and increase across categories, as well as identifying food and leisure as the largest expenses in each respective year. Key figures are accurately reported, such as food dropping from 35% to 17% and leisure rising from 9% to 22%. The response is fully grounded in the provided visual data with no noticeable inaccuracies or missing key features, comfortably fulfilling the requirements for this task.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.5

The response is well-organized with a clear logical progression from an introductory statement to an overall summary paragraph, followed by two body paragraphs detailing decreasing and increasing expenditure categories respectively. Paragraphing is used appropriately. Cohesive devices are employed to structure the response, such as 'Overall,' 'Turning to categories that increased,' and 'while.' However, minor cohesion and punctuation flaws are present, such as comma splices ('In 1968. families spent...') and minor phrasing awkwardness, but the overarching logical arrangement remains clear and easy to follow.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

The student demonstrates an adequate and generally appropriate range of vocabulary for the task, successfully utilizing topic-specific terms such as 'weekly income,' 'spending patterns,' and various expenditure categories ('leisure,' 'housing,' 'transport'). There are some spelling and lexical errors, including 'thier' (their), 'expanse' instead of 'expense,' and 'footware' instead of 'footwear.' Despite these occasional slips and minor inaccuracies, the lexical resource is sufficient to convey the intended information clearly and effectively throughout the text.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 6.0

The response features a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, incorporating comparative clauses and subordinate structures successfully (e.g., 'Spending on food, clothing, fuel and personal goods decreased, while spending on housing, transport and leisure increased'). There are several grammatical errors and punctuation issues, notably 'leisure show the biggest rise it increase from about...' which contains a run-on sentence and tense inconsistency. Other minor slip-ups occur, but they rarely impede communication and the basic grammatical structures are handled with reasonable control.

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