Band 5.0 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.0 · Cambridge IELTS 21 · 2026-11-14

IELTS Writing Task 1 question

The plans below show a college cafe before it was redesigned and how it looks now.

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

The plans below show a college cafe before it was redesigned and how it looks now.

Student answer (Band 5.0)

The following two images illustrates how the cafe were designed in the past and how it is designed today, it shows a crucial changes in the location and the usage of different rooms and facilities including the seats and the kitchen, but some features remained as before such as the trach cans and the toilets, and more serving spots have been added in particulare the vegetables and sauces bars.

In the past, the kitchen area were used to produce all kind of meals and drinks, and the front part of was the serving area. Wherease, today the kitchen are only used to cook the hot meals, and the drinks and coffee and the serving area are now separated from the kitchen and located in the centre of the cafe.

The entry and the bin

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 4.5

You identify that the café has been redesigned and mention changes to the kitchen and serving facilities, so the response is relevant to the plans. However, the summary is incomplete: it does not describe the new take-away and coffee-bar sections, salad bar, outdoor seating or barbecue, and it gives no clear account of the unchanged toilets or central seating. The claim that the bin and toilets remained unchanged is only partly accurate, since the bin became recycling bins. Some details are also unclear, such as saying the serving area is now “located in the centre.” The response is 134 words, below the required 150, and ends with the unfinished phrase “The entry and the bin.” Include a concise overview and cover the main changes more fully.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 4.0

The response has a basic sequence: it introduces the redesign and then compares the kitchen and serving arrangements. Linking words such as “In the past” and “Wherease, today” help signal the comparison. However, the organisation is incomplete and does not guide the reader through the plans: the final line, “The entry and the bin,” is unfinished, and there is no developed paragraph describing the other major changes. The opening sentence also combines several points in a long, crowded structure, making the relationships between them difficult to follow. Use separate paragraphs for an overview and for grouped changes, and connect each comparison clearly rather than leaving ideas as fragments.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

You use some relevant vocabulary for describing a café plan, including “kitchen,” “serving area,” “location,” and “facilities,” and you attempt more specific terms such as “vegetables and sauces bars.” This gives you a workable range, but several choices are inaccurate or imprecise for the visual information: the plan labels a “salad bar,” not vegetables and sauces bars, and “seats” is less suitable than “tables and chairs.” There are also noticeable spelling and word-form errors, including “trach cans,” “particulare,” and “Wherease.” These do not make the whole response impossible to understand, but they reduce precision. Learn the exact plan labels and use standard collocations such as “the café was redesigned” and “additional food counters were added.”

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

You attempt to combine ideas using clauses and contrast, for example, “In the past … Whereas, today …,” but control is inconsistent. Subject–verb agreement errors occur in “images illustrates,” “the cafe were designed,” and “the kitchen area were used.” The opening sentence is a comma splice, joining several independent ideas with commas, and “the front part of was” is structurally incomplete. The final line is also a sentence fragment. These errors sometimes make the intended relationships difficult to follow, although the basic comparison can still be understood. Practise accurate past and present forms, agreement between subjects and verbs, and complete sentence boundaries; shorter, correctly punctuated sentences would improve clarity.

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