Band 6.0 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.0 · Cambridge IELTS 17 · 2026-10-03

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 graph compares the average expenditure that families have allocated for eight categories in 1968 and in 2018.

Overall, food was accounted for the highest share of the total expenditure and stood at 35% in 1968. Conversely, people prioritized leisure in 2018 and spent the highest portion of their income, almost about 22% of the total. However, people from both year spent the least for fuel and power.

In 1968, people focused more on the food, thus they spent almost one-third of their weekly income. They allocated the rest of their income for fuel and power, and transport at 6% and 8%, respectively. They spent the the same for housing rent and clothing and footware at 10%. Similarly, they used 6% for each sectors, namely household and personal goods.

On the contrary, people shifted their thought from spending more on food and indicated a decline on food budget by falling at 18% in 2018. However, they allocated their budget for housing, clothing and footware, household goods and transport at 19%, 10%, 8% and 14%, respectively. Budget for fuel and power and personal goods recorded the lowest ranking at 4% for each.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.5

The response successfully addresses all parts of the task by covering the main features and making relevant comparisons between 1968 and 2018. The overview correctly identifies that food was the highest expenditure in 1968 while leisure took the lead in 2018. However, some ideas are under-developed or contain slight inaccuracies when reporting specific data; for instance, the text states that people spent 18% on food in 2018 and that housing and clothing were 19% and 10% respectively, whereas some figures slightly misrepresent the visual data. The response meets the requirements for the lower band while showing glimpses of the higher band through clear trend identification, yet it falls short of fully extended, precise support across all categories.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.5

The essay displays a coherent overall arrangement with a clear logical progression from an introductory statement to an overview, followed by separate body paragraphs for each year. Information and ideas are generally linked together using cohesive devices such as 'Conversely', 'However', and 'On the contrary'. However, cohesion can sometimes feel mechanical or slightly repetitive, and referencing is not always entirely smooth. Paragraphing is used adequately to separate the two years, but transitional phrases between sentences could be integrated more naturally to achieve a fully fluent flow characteristic of higher bands.

Lexical Resource: Band 6.0

The student uses an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, successfully attempting less common items and functional reporting language like 'expenditure', 'allocated', and 'proportion'. However, there are some noticeable word choice and collocation inaccuracies, such as 'food was accounted for the highest share' (passive misuse) and minor phrasing issues. Spelling and word-choice errors do not impede communication, allowing the reader to follow the argument easily. To reach a higher level, the writer needs to demonstrate greater precision in collocations and avoid awkward phrasing when discussing percentages and data points.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.5

The writing demonstrates a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, utilizing relative clauses and comparative structures. There are some errors in grammar, such as passive voice mishandling ('food was accounted for'), incorrect prepositions ('from both year'), and articles ('used the the same', 'for each sectors'). These errors are typical of the band: they persist throughout the response, but they rarely impede communication. The majority of simple structures are controlled, but attempts at more complex patterns introduce recurring slips in agreement and modifiers, preventing the score from moving into higher brackets.

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

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