Band 4.0 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 4.0 · Cambridge IELTS 18 · 2026-10-14

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 4.0)

The bar chart graph illustrates the annual income of the number of households in US IN 2007,2011 and 2015.

Overall, the highest annual income shows the number of households in US in 2015. and the lowest figure was i 2007.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 2.5

The response makes a limited attempt to describe the chart, but it does not report the main features or compare the income groups. The statement that the highest figure was in 2015 is broadly supported by the $100,000-or-more group, which reached about 33.5 million households; however, saying the lowest figure was in 2007 is unclear and inaccurate as a general summary, since the $75,000–$99,999 group was lowest in 2011. No category figures or trends are given, and the overview does not identify the largely stable middle-income groups or the rise in the highest-income group by 2015. The response is also 110 words below the required minimum. To improve, provide a clear overview and select several accurate comparisons across all three years.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 4.5

There is a basic attempt to organise the response: an opening sentence introduces the chart, followed by an overview beginning with “Overall”. This gives the reader a simple sequence, but the response ends before any supporting details or comparisons are developed, so progression is very limited. The overview’s two claims are not clearly connected, and the fragment “and the lowest figure was i 2007” interrupts the flow. There are no useful linking expressions or references to guide the reader through categories and years. Build a complete report with an introduction, a concise overview, and one or two paragraphs grouping related income bands; use clear links such as “by contrast” and “while” to show comparisons.

Lexical Resource: Band 4.5

The response uses a small set of relevant chart-related terms, including “bar chart”, “annual income”, “households”, “highest” and “lowest”, so the topic is recognisable. However, the vocabulary is very limited and repetitive, and some combinations are unnatural: “the annual income of the number of households” does not clearly express what the chart measures. Capitalisation is inconsistent in “US IN”, and “graph” adds little after “bar chart”. The short response also provides no range of language for describing change or comparison. Use precise phrases such as “the number of households in each income bracket”, “rose to”, “remained stable” and “was the largest category” to report the data more accurately and flexibly.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 4.5

The response shows an attempt to use both a present-tense introduction (“The bar chart graph illustrates…”) and a past-tense overview (“the highest annual income shows…”), but control is uneven. The opening construction is awkward, and the second sentence contains a sentence-boundary problem: “Overall, the highest annual income shows the number of households in US in 2015. and the lowest figure was i 2007.” The lowercase continuation after a full stop and the incomplete-looking “i” make the sentence difficult to read. The two sentences also do not demonstrate much structural variety. Practise forming a clear subject and verb for each claim, maintaining past tense for the years shown, and joining related comparisons with a correctly punctuated clause.

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