Band 6.0 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.0 · Cambridge IELTS 20 · 2026-09-22

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 6.0)

Dear Prachi,

I hope you are doing well. I am writing on respond to your letter about my experience of a year studying abroad as part of a university course.

As an increasing demand of Cybersecurity in Canada, I decied to choose Cybersecurity as a university course and spend a year studying it in one of the major city in Canada is Toronto. Initially, I shortlisted univerisities offering one year course in my domain. After spending few days looking for the best university, I found a university for this course and that is York Univeristy.

This is the best country for everybody who wants to spend learning about themselves and I've learned a lot through out my stay there. This country taught me time management, money savings, importance of learning, truth about being independent and valuable life lessons. I found it very difficult at first but I managed it and I know you will also adopt it.

I think being detacted from comfort zone will abosulty give you a lesson that you will never forget in your life.

Yours truly,

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 6.0

The response successfully covers all three bullet points required by the prompt. You clearly stated where you studied by writing 'spend a year studying it in one of the major city in Canada is Toronto' and mentioning 'York University'. You also described what you learned, noting that the country taught you 'time management, money savings... and valuable life lessons'. Finally, you explained how it was helpful for your studies by linking your cybersecurity course to your decision. Although some sentences are slightly tangled, all key aspects of the task are addressed and supported with relevant personal details, aligning well with the Band 6 descriptors.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 6.0

The letter maintains a coherent overall arrangement and follows an appropriate friendly letter format, beginning with 'Dear Prachi,' and closing correctly. Paragraphing is used to separate your introduction, location details, personal reflections, and final advice. However, cohesion is sometimes faulty or mechanical. For instance, transitional phrases between paragraphs could be smoother, and referencing is occasionally unclear, such as 'adopt it' at the end of the third paragraph where the antecedent is vague. Overall, the logical progression is clear enough to follow without difficulty.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.5

You demonstrate an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, successfully attempting less common items such as 'Cybersecurity', 'shortlisted universities', and 'independent'. However, there are several word choice, collocation, and spelling errors throughout the text. Examples include 'on respond' instead of 'in response', 'decied' (decided), 'univerisities' (universities), 'through out' (throughout), 'detacted' (detached), and 'abosulty' (absolutely). While these errors are noticeable, they do not severely impede communication, placing your lexical performance firmly at Band 5.5 to 6.0.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.5

You use a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, demonstrating some ambition in sentence structure. However, there are frequent grammatical inaccuracies that distract the reader, particularly in preposition usage and clause construction. For example, 'I am writing on respond to your letter' contains an incorrect preposition, and 'spend a year studying it in one of the major city in Canada is Toronto' suffers from a messy clause structure. Subject-verb agreement and spelling errors also persist. Despite these issues, the meaning remains mostly clear, which is characteristic of a Band 5.5 performance.

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

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