Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 20 · 2026-10-02

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 Neetu,

I hope you're in pink of your health. I am writing this letter in respond of your question regarding studying overseas which I completed last year.

Bascially, the course which I choose only been provide by one of the famous universitiy situated in the centre of Tronoto called Algoma University.

My experince was really good and even the best thing was that they provide transportation facilities which helped me commuting easily and save my time.

To be honest, the major thing which I learn from that country is obeying rules and regulations speacially when you are driving. In addition to this,I learned about there culture, famous food and places to visit.

As my course was main based on IT, it help me to gain more advance knowledge. Even, it not only help me in my studies better but also gave a clear pathway to get a desire job.

I hope like my journey and will be waiting to hear a positive feedback from your experince.

Best wishes,

Parneet

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.0

You successfully cover all three bullet points required in the prompt. You tell Neetu where you studied by mentioning Algoma University in Toronto, you describe what you learned about the country, such as obeying driving rules and discovering the local culture, and you explain how the year abroad helped your studies by advancing your IT knowledge and giving you a clear career pathway. However, some of your ideas are a bit under-developed rather than fully extended. For instance, the description of what you learned about the country and the details regarding transportation are quite brief and limited. To move towards a higher band, you should aim to expand on each bullet point with more specific examples and richer elaboration, ensuring that every part of the task is explored with equal depth and clarity.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.0

Your letter has a coherent overall arrangement and follows an appropriate informal layout, beginning with a standard greeting and ending with a clear sign-off. You use some logical connectors and transitional phrases to guide the reader, such as 'In addition to this,' and 'To be honest.' However, referencing and cohesion are sometimes a bit mechanical or faulty. For example, in the sentence 'As my course was main based on IT, it help me to gain more advance knowledge. Even, it not only help me...', the cohesive devices feel repetitive and disjointed. Additionally, paragraphing could be managed with greater precision to separate distinct ideas more naturally. To achieve a higher level, you should work on using a wider variety of cohesive devices more flexibly and ensure that logical relationships between sentences are always smooth and unobtrusive.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

You demonstrate an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, successfully attempting less common words and phrases like 'transportation facilities', 'obeying rules and regulations', and 'career pathway'. However, your response contains a noticeable number of spelling, word-choice, and word-formation errors that occasionally distract the reader, such as 'respond' instead of 'response', 'Bascially', 'universitiy', 'experince', 'main' instead of 'mainly', 'advance' instead of 'advanced', and 'desire' instead of 'desired'. These errors do not completely impede communication, but they restrict your score. To reach a higher standard, you need to use a wider range of vocabulary with greater precision, pay closer attention to word forms and collocations, and thoroughly proofread your writing to eliminate spelling mistakes.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

Your writing displays a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, demonstrating that you can attempt more intricate structures such as 'the course which I choose only been provide by...'. However, you make some errors in grammar and verb forms throughout the letter, such as 'pink of your health' (an unnatural idiom combination), 'which I choose only been provide', 'it help me', and 'I hope like my journey'. While these errors rarely impede overall communication, they persist across different sentence types. To improve your grammatical range and accuracy, you should focus on mastering verb tense consistency, passive voice constructions, and subject-verb agreement, aiming for a higher proportion of error-free complex sentences.

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

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