Band 4.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 4.5 · 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 4.5)

The bar illustrates the how families in one country manage thier weekly income between 1968 to 2018.

Overall, there are eight different things such as food, housing, fuel and power, clothing and footware, household goods, personal goods, transport and a leisure. The food has highest weekly spent income, while fuel and power has least weekly spending.

Leisure, the 1968 weekly income is 8% while the 2018 is approximately 22%. Similarly, for transport 1968 was about 7% while the 2018 is approximately 13 percent.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 4.0

The student attempts to summarise the main features of the chart, noting extreme values such as food being the highest in 1968 and fuel/power being the lowest, alongside some figures for leisure and transport. However, the response is severely constrained by its extremely short length of only 83 words, falling well below the minimum requirement of 150 words. Because of this, many categories are omitted, and the overview and comparisons are drastically under-developed. Consequently, the task cannot be fully addressed.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.0

The text is divided into a very brief introduction and two short body paragraphs, lacking proper essay structure and paragraph development. While there is a basic attempt to present an overview ('Overall, there are eight different things...'), the internal progression is disjointed. Cohesive devices are minimal and mechanical, relying on simple connectors like 'while' and 'similarly', and referencing is occasionally unclear.

Lexical Resource: Band 4.5

The vocabulary used is basic and repetitive, featuring frequent misspellings and lexical errors such as 'thier' instead of 'their', 'footware' instead of 'footwear', and awkward phrasing like 'spent income'. There is little evidence of less common lexical items, and the range is strictly limited to what is immediately visible in the prompt, making it minimally adequate for communication.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 4.5

The response contains a very limited range of structures, mostly relying on basic subject-verb constructions. There are noticeable grammatical errors and awkward omissions, such as 'The bar illustrates the how families...' and missing prepositions or nouns in sentences like 'Leisure, the 1968 weekly income is 8%...'. While simple sentences are generally understandable, attempts at more complex structures are faulty.

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

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