Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer
Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 20 · 2026-09-27
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 5.5)
Dear Shachi,
I am writing to inform you regarding the course that i did in York University recently ,and i heared that you are reluctunt to study abroad for a one year.Although university fees were expensive, I gained valuable knowledge and work experience.
I was enroll in Palliative care for 1 year in York university of Downtown.On the very first day, i was quit upset with this course.However all my feeling turns into happiness when professor Mark gave usefull information with full of energy.
Spending one year in Canada I become skillful in dealing with patient who are suffering from Lifestyle-related illnesses.Apart from this,I learned cultural values,languages.Although journey behind this sucsess was wil full of hardwork and time management assist me to become skillfull professional.
Kindly contact me for any enquire related to admision and paperwork for visa application.
Warm regards,
Nilofar
AI examiner evaluation
| Criterion | Band |
|---|---|
| Task Achievement / Task Response | 5.5 |
| Coherence and Cohesion | 6.0 |
| Lexical Resource | 5.5 |
| Grammatical Range and Accuracy | 5.0 |
| Overall | 5.5 |
Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5
The response covers all three bullet points required in the task instructions. You mentioned studying Palliative care for one year at York University of Downtown in Canada, described what you learned regarding lifestyle-related illnesses and cultural values, and explained how time management and professional skills helped your studies. However, the tone is occasionally inconsistent for a friendly letter, and importantly, the response falls short of the 150-word minimum requirement, containing only 142 words. This negative impact on length prevents the task from being fully achieved, resulting in a penalty to your score.
Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.0
The letter is organised into distinct paragraphs with a standard friendly opening and closing, addressing the prompts in a sequential manner. However, there are noticeable cohesion issues and abrupt transitions. For instance, sentences like 'On the very first day, i was quit upset with this course.However all my feeling turns into happiness' lack smooth logical flow. Referencing is sometimes unclear, and the paragraphing, while present, does not fully manage the progression of ideas seamlessly. Cohesive devices are used, but they are sometimes mechanical or inaccurate, which pulls the overall coherence down to a solid six.
Lexical Resource: Band 5.5
You attempted some less common vocabulary related to your field of study, such as 'Palliative care' and 'Lifestyle-related illnesses', which demonstrates a relevant range of terms for the task. However, there are frequent word choice and spelling errors throughout the text, such as 'reluctunt', 'heared', 'enroll' (instead of enrolled), 'quit' (instead of quite), 'usefull', 'sucsess', 'wil full', 'enquire', and 'admision'. These errors do not entirely impede communication, but they restrict your lexical score to this level because they show a lack of precision in spelling and word forms.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0
You attempted a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, including conditional and subordinate clauses like 'Although university fees were expensive, I gained valuable knowledge' and 'Although journey behind this sucsess was wil full of hardwork...'. However, grammatical accuracy is weak, with multiple errors including lowercase 'i', subject-verb agreement issues ('all my feeling turns'), tense inconsistencies ('i heared that you are reluctunt'), and missing articles or prepositions. While meaning is generally clear, the high frequency of basic and complex structural errors means that only a minority of sentences are error-free.
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