Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · IELTS Complete Catalyst · 2026-10-05

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 5.5)

the bar charts and line graph illustrates how people who live in London think of the city during three years

overall , we can see that the variations in this periode of time is limited ; most of the asked individuals believe that the range of shops is the best thing in the city , with a higher percentage during the first year .

below it , we can admit that , job opportunities , the mixture of people , museums and galleries , that , by the way , are getting a better appreciation year by year , are well approved by the population with minimals differences .

according to the data shown , the least of these all , we have transportation and the night life in the city , which are not considered very bad since the second chart shows that more than 50 percent of the population have some serious problems with the high cost of living , trafic congestion and crimes , especially during the second year of the research .

in fact 80 percent of those individals considerate those things as major issues that need to be fixed to make life safer and easier .

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.0

The response attempts to cover the charts provided, providing an overview and mentioning some main features such as the range of shops and job opportunities. However, the report only partially addresses all parts of the visual data. Key features, such as the trends in the third chart regarding litter, air quality, and noise, are largely missed, and the data points are occasionally inaccurate or generalised vaguely, such as referring to 'the least of these all'. The position presented lacks clarity due to confusing links between the best and worst aspects of living in London, reflecting an under-developed treatment of the visual prompt.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

There is some organisation evident in the division of paragraphs, and an overall progression is attempted as the student moves from the best things to the worst things in the city. However, cohesive devices are often mechanical, inaccurate, or used inappropriately, such as 'below it' and 'in fact'. Paragraphing is also somewhat unconventional, with a large block of text squeezed into awkward sections. Referencing between ideas can be unclear, which disrupts the logical flow of the report and makes the connections between the various data sets difficult to follow.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

The vocabulary used is limited but minimally adequate to convey basic concepts related to the charts, such as 'job opportunities', 'cost of living', and 'transportation'. There are noticeable lexical errors and awkward collocations that impact precision, such as 'asked individuals' instead of surveyed residents, and 'trafic congestion' (spelling error) or 'considerate' instead of consider. These errors and the restricted range prevent the response from achieving a higher band, though the meaning is generally retrievable despite the slips.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The text displays a limited range of sentence structures, relying heavily on simple constructions, with attempts at complex sentences often containing faults. There are frequent errors in grammar and punctuation, including missing capitalisation at the start of sentences, punctuation errors with commas (e.g., placing spaces before commas), and awkward prepositional phrases like 'during three years' instead of over a three-year period. These frequent errors and clumsy syntactic patterns can cause some difficulty for the reader and reflect a lack of control over more advanced grammatical forms.

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