Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 20 · 2026-10-06

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 Isha,

I hope this letter finds you in good health and high spirits. I am delighted to hear about you to study abroad as part of your university course, which I have completed recently.

First of all, when I came here, there were many universities and colleges ready to give offer letter for my course, but now it is become challenging for upcoming immigrants. By the way, I can prefer you to take offer from the Conestoga college where I studied.

When I landed in Canada, I thought that would be an better opportunity for recent graduate from the higher secondary school. After coming to Canada, I have learnt to management of timing and how to become independent women in my life. Sometimes it is hard to manage but the timing taught me to stay calm in challenging period.

Furthermore, I have completed my study in Computer Science Engineering that was very helpful for my future career and I got better opportunity as an employee of the rogers company.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Thank you.

Best regards,

Lynn Paul

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5

The response addresses the main purpose of the letter, but covers the required bullet points only partially and with limited development. While you mentioned where you studied by naming Conestoga College, your descriptions regarding what you learned about Canada and how the year abroad helped your studies remain quite brief and under-developed. For instance, stating that you learned 'to management of timing and how to become independent women' touches on the requirements, but the ideas lack the necessary elaboration and clear connection to your university course. To move to a higher level, you should ensure that every bullet point is fully expanded with specific examples and clear explanations of how the experience impacted your academic progression.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

The letter shows some overall organisation with a clear beginning and ending, but it lacks a clear progression throughout the body paragraphs. Cohesive devices are at times inadequate or repetitive, such as the frequent reliance on simple connectors like 'and' or 'after coming to', which makes the flow mechanical. Additionally, referencing is occasionally unclear, such as the sudden shift when discussing immigration challenges and college offers in the second paragraph, which detracts from the main topic. To improve, you should group your ideas into more logically structured paragraphs and use a wider variety of cohesive devices smoothly to guide the reader through your personal narrative without abrupt jumps.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

You use a limited but minimally adequate range of vocabulary for this task, allowing you to convey your basic message. However, there are noticeable errors in word choice, word form, and collocation that cause some difficulty for the reader, such as writing 'give offer letter', 'prefer you to take offer', and 'independent women' instead of 'independent woman'. There are also awkward phrasings like 'timing taught me to stay calm' instead of 'time management taught me'. To achieve a higher score, you need to use a wider range of less common lexical items with greater precision and pay close attention to correct word forms, singular and plural agreements, and natural collocations.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The writing demonstrates a limited range of grammatical structures, relying mostly on simple sentences alongside a few attempts at complex sentences that often contain errors. There are frequent grammatical mistakes throughout the text, including tense inconsistencies and article errors, such as 'about you to study', 'it is become challenging', 'that would be an better opportunity', and 'completed my study in Computer Science Engineering that was'. These frequent errors can occasionally cause difficulty for the reader. To reach a higher band, you should incorporate a wider variety of complex sentence structures and improve your control over verb forms, prepositions, and basic sentence construction to ensure greater grammatical accuracy.

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