Band 4.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 4.5 · 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 4.5)

The bar chart illustrate the anual income eaned by the households living in the united state and thier total quantity in 2007, 2011 and 2015.

Overall, it is clear that thier is slight increase in population of 2nd, 3rd and 4th houshold, while 1st and 5th household caparitivly show much rise and fall. On the other hand, 5th household has highest population in 2015, whereas 4th household show minimum population in 2011.

It is noted that the population of 5th houshold population gardualy increasing with increase in year but has income has less than 25000 dollar. While the population of 2nd and 1st houshold significantly incresaed from 2007 to 2011 but suddenly droped in 2015 which hold anual income more than 25000 dollar. Population 3rd household ramained stable during all year with anual income more 50 thousand dollar. 4th household show diffrent groth as compared to other it decreased in 2011 before increasing in 2015 and holding anual income more tha 100 thousand dollar.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.0

The student attempts to address the prompt by summarizing information from the bar chart regarding US household income categories across three years. However, there are significant factual errors in interpreting the data. For instance, the student states that the population of the fifth household has an income of less than $25,000, whereas the chart shows that category represents '$100,000 or more'. Similarly, income brackets and trends are frequently confused, misinterpreting the labels and numerical values provided in the prompt. While an overview is attempted, it is inaccurate and fails to clearly highlight the main features or make valid comparisons. This corresponds to Band 5.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.0

The response is organized into three paragraphs, including an introduction and an overview. However, the logical progression is frequently disrupted by confusing references and awkward transitions. Cohesive devices are used mechanically and inaccurately (e.g., 'On the other hand', 'While the population...'). The referencing of categories using terms like '1st', '2nd', and '5th household' without clear mapping makes the text difficult to follow. Paragraphing is present, but overall the structure lacks clear flow and cohesion. This fits the Band 5 descriptor.

Lexical Resource: Band 4.0

The vocabulary used is very basic and repetitive. There are numerous spelling errors throughout the text, such as 'anual' instead of annual, 'eaned' instead of earned, 'united state', 'thier', 'caparitivly', 'gardualy', 'incresaed', 'droped', 'diffrent', and 'groth'. The student attempts some less common terms like 'significantly' and 'gardualy', but lexical control is poor, and word choice errors (such as confusing income brackets with household rankings) impede communication and reduce the precision of the response. This aligns with Band 4.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 4.0

The student attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, but grammatical accuracy is very low. There are frequent, severe errors in subject-verb agreement (e.g., 'The bar chart illustrate', 'thier is', 'household show'), tense usage, and missing prepositions or articles. Sentence boundaries are often blurred by run-on structures lacking proper punctuation. These errors cause substantial difficulty for the reader and mean that error-free sentences are rare. This performance is consistent with Band 4.

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

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