Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 18 · 2026-09-25

IELTS Writing Task 1 question

The chart below shows the number of households in the US by their annual income in 2007, 2011 and 2015.

Summarize the information by selecting and reporting the main features and make comparisons where relevant.

Student answer (Band 5.5)

The bar chart presents the number of households in millions on the account of their average annual income during the period of 2007, 2011 and 2015.

Overall, in the years 2007and 2015 most of the households had an annual income greater than or equal to 100,000 dollars, whereas the figure was lowest in all these years for the households with income between 75,000 and 99,999 dollars.

In year 2007, around 29 millions of houselhods had the annual income of 100,000 dollars or greater. The figure reduced to almost 27.5 million by the year 2011 and became the largest recorded figure in 2015, with most of households upto 34 millions. Households with the annual income between 25,000 and 49,000 dollars were the second most common started from 26 million in 2007 to almost 30 million in 2011 to finally

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.0

The response attempts to summarise the main features of the chart, providing an overview and some specific data points such as the figures for households earning $100,000 or more in 2007, 2011, and 2015. However, there are notable inaccuracies in reading the data, such as stating that households with an income of $75,000 to $99,999 had the lowest figure in all these years (whereas the chart shows other brackets lower in certain years, or fluctuating). Furthermore, the response is incomplete and cuts off mid-sentence ("...to finally "). Crucially, the length requirement is not met as the text contains only 138 words, failing to reach the 150-word minimum. This significantly impacts the overall task achievement as the development is truncated.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

The response begins with a clear introduction and an overall statement. Cohesive devices are used to signal progression, such as 'Overall,' 'whereas,' and 'In year 2007.' Paragraphing is attempted, although the text cuts off abruptly before a full conclusion or final body paragraph could be developed. Referencing is generally clear, but the logical progression is broken by the incomplete ending of the response. Overall arrangement shows some basic organisational structure, but the lack of completion limits the cohesive flow across the text.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

The student attempts a range of vocabulary suitable for a task 1 response, including terms like 'annual income,' 'households,' 'most common,' and 'figure.' There are some awkward phrasings such as 'on the account of their average annual income' instead of 'according to their annual income,' and spelling errors like 'houselhods' and 'upto.' While an adequate range of vocabulary is attempted for the task, the presence of word-choice errors and the truncation prevent it from reaching a higher band.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.5

The text demonstrates a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, such as introductory prepositional phrases and comparative clauses ('whereas the figure was lowest...'). There are grammatical errors, particularly with prepositions and articles, such as 'In year 2007' (instead of 'In the year 2007') and 'around 29 millions of houselhods' (instead of 'around 29 million households'). Additionally, the sentence structure breaks down completely at the end where the text trails off incomplete. Despite these issues, basic sentence construction is mostly understandable.

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

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