Band 6.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.5 · Cambridge IELTS 21 · 2026-09-17

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 6.5)

The college café maps illustrates the café before it was redesigned and how it looks after renovation.

Overall, The cafe went through an impressive transformation. Many facilities had been provided in the same space. There is a clear increase in seating area; expended to outdoor seating. Furthermore, Two rooms of café are changed to modern facilities.

The café before was quite simple and limited to some basic student and staff needs. The main entrance of café was from eastern side, bin is placed next to the entrance having toilets on southern corner which are same in new layout. Walking through the entrance leading to sitting area, beside chairs there was two staff dining room for the refreshment of college staff. At the end of cafe, at north side there was serving area along kitchen.

The café today has many modern facilities. The staff dining rooms which was located at northern side transformed into the coffe bar and take away food. while, serving area is totaly dedicated to hot meals section and on the northern wall of the cafe salad bar is constructed. With salad bar at south side there is a door which leads to outdoor seating and barbecque area.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 7.0

The student successfully addresses all parts of the task by reporting the main features of the college cafe before and after the redesign and making relevant comparisons. An overview is provided in the second paragraph, highlighting key transformations such as the expansion of seating and the addition of modern facilities. Key spatial shifts are accurately detailed, including the conversion of staff dining rooms into a coffee bar and take-away area, the introduction of a salad bar, and the addition of outdoor seating and a barbecue area. While some minor descriptive details could be more tightly integrated, the overall response covers the visual data well, earning a solid band score.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 6.5

The response is organized into logical paragraphs, moving from an introduction and overview to a description of the original layout, and finally detailing the current layout. Cohesive devices are used to guide the reader through the comparison, such as 'Overall', 'Furthermore', and 'while'. However, some cohesive links and referencing are slightly mechanical or repetitive, and paragraph boundaries could be used more fluidly to structure the comparisons between the past and present layouts. Despite these minor issues, there is a clear overall progression that makes the information easy to follow.

Lexical Resource — Band 6.0

The student demonstrates an adequate and generally appropriate range of vocabulary for describing maps and renovations, using terms such as 'redesigned', 'transformation', 'facilities', and 'construction'. Less common lexical items are attempted, such as 'expended' (intended as expanded) and 'barbecque'. However, there are noticeable word choice and spelling errors ('maps illustrates' instead of 'map illustrates', 'coffe bar', 'barbecque'), which occasionally detract from precision. The range is sufficient to communicate the main points clearly, but precision and control over less common vocabulary prevent a higher band.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.5

The student attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, such as relative clauses and temporal prepositional phrases. However, grammatical accuracy is inconsistent. There are several noticeable errors, including subject-verb agreement issues ('The college café maps illustrates', 'bin is placed', 'The staff dining rooms which was located'), incorrect preposition use, and minor punctuation slips. While these errors do not severely impede communication, they occur frequently enough to prevent the writing from reaching a higher band score.

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

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