Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer
Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 11 · 2026-09-19
IELTS Writing Task 1 question
The charts below show the proportions of British students at one university in England who were able to speak other languages in addition to English, in 2000 and 2010
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
Student answer (Band 5.5)
The pie charts shows the percentage of British students at a university in England. Who could speak languages other than English in 2000 and 2010.
Overall, Spanish was the most common additional langauge in both years. Also, the percentage of students who could speak at least one other langauge increased over the period, While the number who could speak only English decreased.
moving towards in 2000, 30% of students could speak spanish,making it the largest groups. French and other language were each spoken by 15% of student, while germen and two other langauge accounted for 10% each. The remaining 20% could not speak another language.
Looking at the chart in 2010, Spanish increased to 35%, While french rose to 20%. The proportion speaking two other languages also incerased from 10% to 15%. In contrast, the figers for german and another language fell slightly to 10%. Finally, only 10% of students spoke no other language, Which was half the 2000 figere.
AI examiner evaluation
| Criterion | Band |
|---|---|
| Task Achievement / Task Response | 5.0 |
| Coherence and Cohesion | 5.5 |
| Lexical Resource | 5.5 |
| Grammatical Range and Accuracy | 5.5 |
| Overall | 5.5 |
Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 5.0
The student attempts to summarise the main features of the two pie charts comparing the proportions of British students able to speak other languages in 2000 and 2010. However, there are significant factual inaccuracies in reading the data from the prompt. For instance, the student states that in 2000 '30% of students could speak spanish, making it the largest groups,' whereas the raw data shows Spanish at 20% and 'No Other Language' at 30%. Similarly, figures for French and German are misreported in the body paragraphs. While an overview is attempted, the pervasive data errors indicate that the student has misread key elements of the visual information, preventing a fully accurate representation of the trends.
Coherence and Cohesion — Band 5.5
The response is organised into logical paragraphs, starting with an introductory sentence, followed by an overview paragraph, and then two body paragraphs addressing the specific years. However, cohesive devices are sometimes awkwardly deployed or misused, such as 'moving towards in 2000' and 'Looking at the chart in 2010'. Referencing is also occasionally unclear or imprecise. Paragraphing is present and helps structure the response, but overall progression and logical relationships between ideas are disrupted by inaccurate data reporting and repetitive transitional phrases.
Lexical Resource — Band 5.5
The student demonstrates an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, successfully using terms such as 'percentage,' 'proportion,' 'increased,' and 'decreased.' There are several spelling and word choice errors, including 'langauge' instead of 'language,' 'germen' instead of 'German,' 'incerased' instead of 'increased,' and 'figers' instead of 'figures.' Furthermore, some collocations are awkward. While the vocabulary is sufficient to convey general concepts, the persistent spelling and lexical inaccuracies pull the score down to this band.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.5
The response features a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, such as 'the percentage of students who could speak at least one other langauge increased over the period, While the number who could speak only English decreased.' Punctuation is a notable weakness, with several major fragment errors and run-on issues, such as starting a sentence with 'Who could speak languages...' directly after a period. There are also capitalization errors (e.g., 'spanish,' 'french') and erratic comma usage. Grammatical errors are frequent enough to cause some distraction, though meaning is usually recoverable.
See this exact question answered at other band scores — the same prompt compared across bands.
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