Band 5.0 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer
Overall Band Score: 5.0 · IELTS Complete Catalyst · 2026-09-26
IELTS Writing Task 1 question
The bar charts and line graph below show the results of a survey conducted over a three-year period to discover what people who live in London think of the city.
Write a report for a university lecturer describing the information below.
What are the best things about living in London?
Student answer (Band 5.0)
The bar charts illustrates the survey where the comparison between the best and worse things in London over a three-year, while table represented the major issues in London over the same years.
Overall, it is clear that range of shops are the best over all the years, whereas cost of living, traffic congestion and crime are the worse things in first year. In addition, most people agree on that the litter is a major problem .
The popular thing about living in London is the range of shops around above 40%, whereas job opportunities, mixture of people, museums and art galleries are also familiar below 40%, while night life and transport are the least popular.
Turning to worsen things in London, cost of living, traffic congestion and crime are the bad things
AI examiner evaluation
| Criterion | Band |
|---|---|
| Task Achievement / Task Response | 4.5 |
| Coherence and Cohesion | 5.0 |
| Lexical Resource | 5.0 |
| Grammatical Range and Accuracy | 5.0 |
| Overall | 5.0 |
Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 4.5
The response fails to meet the minimum word count requirement of 150 words, stopping at only 132 words, which directly impacts the completeness of the task. While the student attempts to provide an overview and describe some data points from the charts, the report is heavily truncated and cuts off mid-sentence ('Turning to worsen things in London, cost of living, traffic congestion and crime are the bad things'). Key features are only partially covered, and the third chart regarding litter, air quality, and noise is only briefly mentioned without adequate detail. To improve, the student must ensure all parts of the visual data are addressed and write well over the minimum word threshold.
Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.0
The essay demonstrates some basic organizational structure with an introductory sentence and some transitional phrases such as 'Overall, it is clear that' and 'Turning to worsen things'. However, the progression is disrupted because the response ends abruptly. Paragraphing is underdeveloped, with the body paragraphs merging into a single fragment. Cohesive devices are used rather mechanically, and referencing is occasionally unclear, such as referring to the charts as 'a table' in the opening sentence. To achieve a higher band, the student needs to structure the report into distinct, logical paragraphs with smooth cohesive links.
Lexical Resource: Band 5.0
The vocabulary used is basic and repetitive, featuring phrases like 'best things', 'worse things', and 'major problem'. There are notable word choice and collocation errors, such as using 'worse things' instead of 'worst things', 'worsen things' instead of 'worst aspects', and 'familiar' instead of 'common'. While the student attempts some topic-related vocabulary like 'job opportunities', 'traffic congestion', and 'cost of living', the limited range and frequent lexical inaccuracies restrict the score to a Band 5.0. Developing a wider range of precise vocabulary and synonyms for describing data trends is essential.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0
The text contains a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, but grammatical accuracy is weak. There are several noticeable errors, including subject-verb agreement issues ('The bar charts illustrates') and incorrect comparative/superlative forms ('worse things' instead of 'worst things', 'range of shops are' instead of 'is'). Furthermore, the sentence structure breaks down completely at the end of the response where the final sentence is incomplete. These frequent errors cause some difficulty for the reader and reflect limited control over complex grammatical forms.
See this exact question answered at other band scores. The same prompt compared across bands.
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