Band 4.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 4.5 · Cambridge IELTS 21 · 2026-09-25

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 4.5)

The maps show the major transformation of college cafe before redesign and right now.

Overall many changes occour in kitchen,staff dinning rooms but the major changes that cafe now have outdoor seating and have area for Barbecue which is actually addition to cafe.

As old cafe the north side have kitchen and serving area having all food and drink where now kitchen is remained but serving area is replaced into hot meals while in cafe in Tables and chairs were held for customer and now still it is as it is but in upper middle inside cafe there was staff dinning rooms which are now converted into two parts take awayfood and cofee bar while toilet and only bin was in the cafe but now toilet is same there but bin is transform to recycling bin and salad bar is added into west side inside the cafe.

Addition of Barbecue on west south side outside of cafe outside sitting which is added outdor of cafe.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.0

The response covers all the main changes shown in the maps, such as the conversion of staff dining rooms into a take-away food and coffee bar, the addition of the salad bar, recycling bins, and the outdoor seating area with a barbecue. However, the information is presented in a very dense, single-paragraph structure that lacks a clear overview and sufficient summarisation. While the student attempts to report the main features, the lack of paragraphing and poor organisation prevent the response from achieving a higher band. Phrases like 'Overall many changes occour' attempt an overview, but the execution remains basic and lacks precision.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 4.0

The response suffers severely from a lack of paragraphing, being written as one continuous, unbroken block of text. Cohesive devices are minimal, repetitive, and mechanical, relying heavily on words like 'and', 'where', and 'while' to string clauses together into run-on sentences. For instance, the long sentence beginning with 'As old cafe the north side have kitchen...' is difficult to parse due to poor referencing and a lack of logical progression. There is no clear flow or separation of ideas between the interior changes and exterior additions.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

The vocabulary used is quite basic and repetitive, with frequent spelling errors ('occour', 'dinning', 'cofee', 'outdor', 'west south side'). The student attempts some task-specific vocabulary taken directly from the prompt, such as 'kitchen', 'serving area', 'salad bar', and 'barbecue', but struggles to use them with correct collocation or grammatical form (e.g., 'serving area is replaced into hot meals'). Word choice is limited, and the lexical range is barely adequate to describe the changes in the diagrams.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 4.0

Grammatical control is weak throughout the response. There is a heavy reliance on simple sentence structures, and attempts at complex sentences result in frequent errors, incorrect prepositions, and non-standard syntax (e.g., 'As old cafe the north side have kitchen...', 'where now kitchen is remained', 'bin is transform to recycling bin'). Subject-verb agreement and tense consistency are poorly maintained. Punctuation is largely neglected, with run-on sentences lacking proper periods or commas.

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