Band 4.0 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 4.0 · Cambridge IELTS 20 · 2026-09-21

IELTS Writing Task 1 question

The younger sister of one of your friends is thinking about spending a year studying abroad as part of her university course. You did this recently, and she has asked you about your experience.

Write a letter to your friend's sister. In your letter

• tell her where you studied during your year abroad

• describe what you learnt about the country you studied in

• explain why your year abroad was helpful for your studies

Begin your letter as follows:
Dear........,

Student answer (Band 4.0)

Dear Sir,

I am writing this letter to express my dissatisfaction regarding the services that I received during my stay at your hotel.

Last weekend, I stayed at your hotel in room 432. No doubt, room was neat and tiedy, however, air condtioning was not working. I am highly disappointed from the customer service at your hotel.

I checked in around 13:00, and everything was going well untill I entered into my room. I found that there was some issue with the air conditioner because my room was exteremely hot. I tried to contact customer service but nobody responded. However, I went to the reception to complain about this issue, but the lady who was sitting there ignored me completely. After waiting there for 1 hour they send somebody to fix the air conditioning.

I would really appreciate if you can talk to your staff to be professional at workplace, and check the rooms before giving it to customers.

Waiting for your response.

Kind regards,

Gurpreet

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 1.0

The response completely fails to address the prompt requirements. The writing task instructions specifically asked the student to write a letter to a friend's sister about a year spent studying abroad, including where they studied, what they learned about the country, and why the year was helpful for their university studies. However, the student wrote a formal complaint letter addressed to 'Dear Sir' regarding a bad hotel stay and an air conditioning issue in room 432. Because the content is entirely off-topic and addresses a completely different task type, it cannot be considered a valid response to the prompt. Therefore, a very low band score must be assigned for task achievement.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 6.0

Despite being off-topic, the letter is structured with appropriate paragraph breaks separating the introduction, body paragraphs detailing the hotel incident, and the conclusion. Basic cohesive devices and transition markers such as 'However', 'After waiting there for 1 hour', and 'Kind regards' are used to connect ideas. Progression is logical in terms of complaint letter formatting, even though the content itself is irrelevant to the actual prompt. Referencing is mostly clear, allowing the reader to follow the narrative of the hotel complaint without confusion.

Lexical Resource — Band 4.5

The vocabulary used is generally basic and contains several spelling and word-choice errors, such as 'tiedy' instead of tidy, 'condtioning' instead of conditioning, and 'exteremely' instead of extremely. The writer attempts some functional vocabulary related to complaints, such as 'dissatisfaction', 'customer service', and 'professional', but the overall lexical range is limited and reflects noticeable errors that detract from the writing quality.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.0

The text contains a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, such as 'I tried to contact customer service but nobody responded' and 'I would really appreciate if you can talk to your staff'. However, there are several grammatical and mechanical errors throughout the text, including 'untill' with an extra 'l', missing articles ('room was neat' instead of 'the room was neat'), incorrect prepositions ('disappointed from' instead of 'disappointed with'), and subject-verb agreement issues ('they send somebody' instead of 'they sent somebody'). These errors demonstrate inconsistent control over basic and complex grammatical forms.

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

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