Band 6.0 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.0 · Cambridge IELTS 17 · 2026-10-05

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 presents information about how families in a particular country spent their weekly wages from 1968 to 2018.

Overall, the families spent highest on food and leisure throughout, on the same hand hand, they spent lesser on fuel and power in both years respectively.

In 1968, the households spent largest on food at 30%, while housing, clothing and footware came distant second with about 10% respectively. Futhermore, fuel and power are the least expenditure made by the families at about 6%, while household goods,personal goods, transport are all under 10%.

During 2018, leisure was where the families invested more of their weekly income with over 20%, whilst housing and food came second with less than 20%. Moreover,the households spent lowest on personal goods, fuel and power by about 3-4 percent, whereas transport, household goods, and clothind and footware were from about 5% but less than 15% on the average weekly income.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5

The response addresses the main features of the chart by outlining spending patterns in 1968 and 2018, providing an overview and making comparisons. However, some parts are underdeveloped or contain inaccuracies regarding the data. For instance, the student states that families spent highest on leisure 'throughout', which is factually incorrect since leisure was only 9% in 1968, whereas food was 35%. Additionally, food in 1968 is incorrectly cited as 30% instead of 35%. While an overview is present, the selection of data is uneven and contains some misinterpretations of the visual information, placing the response at this level where ideas are relevant but lack complete accuracy and thorough development.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.5

The response exhibits a coherent overall arrangement with a clear paragraph structure separating the introduction, overview, and body paragraphs for each year. Information is generally ordered logically, and cohesive devices such as 'while', 'Futhermore', 'During 2018', and 'whereas' are employed to guide the reader through the data. Referencing and progression are mostly clear, though occasional awkward transitions like 'on the same hand hand' detract from the fluency. To reach higher bands, the student needs to ensure that cohesive devices are used with greater precision and that logical relationships between sentences are consistently maintained without mechanical flaws.

Lexical Resource: Band 6.0

The writer demonstrates an adequate range of vocabulary suitable for the task, successfully incorporating terms such as 'weekly wages', 'households', 'expenditure', and 'proportion'. There are some attempts at less common vocabulary, though these are accompanied by lexical inaccuracies and spelling errors, such as 'footware' instead of 'footwear' and awkward phrasing like 'spent highest on' or 'invested more of their weekly income'. Word choice and collocations are occasionally imprecise. However, the errors do not impede communication, allowing the reader to grasp the intended meaning easily, which aligns with this level of lexical performance.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 6.0

The response features a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, demonstrating attempts at subordinate clauses and comparative structures. There are some grammatical and punctuation errors present, such as subject-verb agreement issues in 'fuel and power are the least expenditure' and prepositional slips like 'lowest on personal goods'. Punctuation around introductory phrases and listing is also slightly faulty. Nevertheless, these errors rarely impede communication, and the majority of simple structures remain clear and accurate, reflecting a solid command of basic grammatical patterns alongside developing control over more complex sentence forms.

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

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