Band 4.0 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 4.0 · Cambridge IELTS 21 · 2026-09-28

IELTS Writing Task 1 question

The graph below gives information about the number of jobs in four sectors of the economy in the US between 1960 and 2020.

Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.

Number of jobs in four sectors of the economy in the US, 1960-2020

Student answer (Band 4.0)

The line graph demonstrate about manufacturing, retail, agriculture, healthcare employment ratio in us from 1960 to 2020.

The graph shows the healthcare department highly increased from 1960 to 1980 further more it continued to fluctuate gradually year by year.

furthermore the jobs in other department like in agriculture have been decreased and not even have a good chance to stand in other departments.

in addition to retail market became increasing from 190 to 2020 competiting with the healthcare market

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 4.0

The response is severely under-length, containing only 79 words compared to the required minimum of 150 words. This significantly impacts task achievement because the student fails to provide a fully developed overview and omits key data comparisons across the four sectors. While the introduction attempts to paraphrase the prompt ('The line graph demonstrate about...'), the body paragraphs only touch upon healthcare, agriculture, and retail superficially, missing key figures such as the peak of manufacturing in 1980 or exact trends over the 60-year period. Consequently, the response only satisfies the descriptors for Band 4 due to its minimal development and failure to meet the basic word count requirement.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 4.0

The text lacks proper paragraphing, being written as a series of isolated, single-sentence paragraphs rather than a cohesive report. Cohesive devices are used awkwardly or inaccurately, such as 'further more', 'furthermore', and 'in addition to retail market became increasing', which disrupts the logical flow of ideas. There is no clear overall progression or cohesive structure connecting the sentences into a unified description of the chart. Punctuation is largely absent, with missing capitalisation at the beginning of sentences (e.g., 'in addition to retail market...') and missing full stops. This places the response firmly in Band 4 for Coherence and Cohesion.

Lexical Resource: Band 4.0

The lexical resource is basic and repetitive. The student relies on elementary vocabulary such as 'jobs', 'department' (incorrectly used for economic sectors), and 'market'. There are noticeable word choice and collocation errors, such as 'highly increased' instead of 'rose significantly' and 'not even have a good chance to stand', which sounds unnatural. Vocabulary for describing trends is limited to basic terms like 'increased' and 'decreased'. Spelling and word formation are occasionally flawed (e.g., 'competiting'). These limitations restrict the lexical score to Band 4.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 4.0

The grammatical range is extremely limited, consisting almost entirely of simple or faulty complex sentences. There are frequent, heavy grammatical errors that impede comprehension, such as subject-verb agreement issues ('The line graph demonstrate') and incorrect verb tense/form combinations ('became increasing', 'not even have a good chance to stand'). Punctuation and capitalisation are largely ignored throughout the text. Because errors are frequent and recurrent across nearly every sentence, the response achieves a Band 4 for grammatical accuracy.

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

Browse more IELTS Writing model answers or get your own writing scored by the same AI examiner.