Band 4.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 4.5 · 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 4.5)

London city, a city of dreams for many. We are describing the experiences of people living in london for over 3 years recorded through a survey. As per the survey people living in london find the range of the shops as their top most liked things or the best thing about living in london, with variety of shops for all kinds of needs, people feel very satisfied as their every need both minor and major are fulfilled. And the next thing liked by the people after the range of shops is the job opportunities, people from different backgrounds, regardless of their age, qualification, work experience have been employed here across various streams and are payed very good interms of salaries. The mixture of people, people from different backgrounds, different culltures meet here which opens huge door of exploration and opportunities for people, the musuems & art galleries in the city which explores about the rich history of the city and art forms from different artisits in the city also attracts the people here and lastly the night life followed by the transport facilities here attacts the people here.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 4.0

The response makes a significant attempt to describe the survey results, focusing primarily on the best things about living in London. However, it fails to cover all parts of the task. It completely omits the second chart regarding the worst things about living in London and the line graph illustrating whether specific issues are considered major problems. Furthermore, the writing reads more like a continuous, unstructured stream of consciousness rather than a formal academic report, with a tendency to include outside assumptions and explanations not provided in the prompt (e.g., 'people feel very satisfied as their every need both minor and major are fulfilled'). To achieve a higher band score, the report must present an overview of all key charts provided in the prompt and avoid introducing unverified personal commentary.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 4.0

Coherence and cohesion are major weaknesses in this response. The entire text consists of a single, extremely long run-on sentence separated only by commas, lacking proper terminal punctuation and paragraph breaks. There is no clear logical organisation, paragraphing, or structured progression of ideas. Cohesive devices are either missing or misused, relying on simple comma splices rather than conjunctions or transition markers to link clauses. For instance, phrases like 'The mixture of people, people from different backgrounds...' demonstrate a lack of control over sentence boundaries. The writer needs to divide the text into logical paragraphs (introduction, overview, and specific body paragraphs for the different data sets) and use standard cohesive devices to guide the reader.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

The vocabulary used is generally basic and repetitive, with frequent lexical and collocational inaccuracies. For example, the student writes 'top most liked things' instead of 'most popular features' or 'highest-rated aspects', and uses 'payed' instead of 'paid'. While there are attempts to use less common vocabulary items such as 'exploration', 'qualifications', and 'streams', these are often awkward in context or contain spelling errors (e.g., 'culltures', 'artisits', 'attacts'). The range of vocabulary is restricted to simple descriptions, and lexical control is insufficient for a higher academic band.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 4.0

Grammatical control is poor due to the complete absence of proper sentence boundaries. The student writes a 188-word text composed of a single run-on sentence connected entirely by commas. This represents a severe violation of basic punctuation and grammatical structure. There are also several minor mechanical and grammatical errors, such as spelling ('london', 'payed', 'musuems') and subject-verb agreement issues. While individual clauses contain simple and some expanded structures, the lack of full sentences and terminal punctuation means error-free structures are virtually non-existent, anchoring this criterion firmly at band 4.0.

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