Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer
Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 11 · 2026-09-14
IELTS Writing Task 1 question
The take below gives information about the underground railway systems in six cities.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
Underground Railway Systems
City Date opened Kilometers of route Passengers per year (in millions) London 1863 394 775 Paris 1900 199 1191 Tokyo 1927 155 1927 Washington DC 1976 126 144 Kyoto 1981 11 45 Los Angeles 2001 28 50
Student answer (Band 5.5)
the underground railway system is an important mean of transportation in modern times however it's quite old and entirely new thing we find that the system was first established in london by as serly as 1863 and it's expanded as long as 394 km of railway route the underground railway systems are common among different cities around the world by 1900 the vity of paris also had an underground railway system stretching across 199km what's remarkable is that this system differ from the city of London one not only in length of route despite Paris underground railway system being considarably shorter but a larger number of passengers use it annually 775 million people annually use 394 km of the London underground railway system while 1191 million people use Paris's underground railway system this trend continues with the city of Tokyo taking it a step further with only 255km of route being used by 1927 million people annually with more developing nations of humanity rising to the pictures more underground railways had to be established to meet the needs of the people living in the cities by 1976 Washington dc had 126km of route to help 144 million passangers annually use a convenient mean of travel 1981 was a year the city of Kyoto introduced it's people with 11km of underground railway which was used by 45 million passengers by 2001 yhe city of Los Angeles joined the list with 50 million passengers using 28 km of underground railway
AI examiner evaluation
| Criterion | Band |
|---|---|
| Task Achievement / Task Response | 6.0 |
| Coherence and Cohesion | 5.0 |
| Lexical Resource | 5.5 |
| Grammatical Range and Accuracy | 5.0 |
| Overall | 5.5 |
Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 6.0
The response covers all parts of the prompt well by summarising the main features of the underground railway systems across the six cities and providing relevant comparisons. For example, the student successfully contrasts London and Paris, noting that despite Paris having a shorter route length (199km versus London's 394km), it carries a higher annual number of passengers (1191 million versus 775 million). Key data points such as opening dates, route lengths, and passenger numbers are accurately extracted and reported. While the organisation within a single large paragraph impacts the clarity of data selection slightly, the core requirements of Task 1 are fulfilled adequately, demonstrating a solid grasp of data comparison.
Coherence and Cohesion — Band 5.0
The response suffers from a significant organisational drawback: it is written as one continuous, block paragraph without any paragraph breaks. This makes the progression of ideas feel crowded and difficult to follow. Although the student attempts to sequence information chronologically and logically (moving from London in 1863 to Los Angeles in 2001), the lack of paragraphing heavily restricts cohesion. Furthermore, cohesive devices are weak and repetitive, relying on basic connectors or running clauses together without proper punctuation. Referencing and logical transitions between different cities need much better structuring to achieve a higher band score.
Lexical Resource — Band 5.5
The student demonstrates an adequate vocabulary range for the task, attempting some less common lexical items such as 'established', 'stretching across', and 'convenient mean of travel'. However, there are notable spelling and word choice errors throughout the text, including 'mean' instead of 'means', 'serly' instead of 'early', 'vity' instead of 'city', 'considarably' instead of 'considerably', 'passangers' instead of 'passengers', and 'yhe' instead of 'the'. Despite these errors, communication is not severely impeded, and the intended meaning of the data is generally clear to the reader, placing the response solidly in the band 6 category.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.0
The grammatical range features a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, but accuracy is severely compromised by a complete absence of punctuation, capitalisation, and proper sentence boundaries. The entire text is essentially one giant run-on sentence connected by lowercase letters and conjunctions, lacking periods or commas where necessary. There are also structural errors and agreement issues, such as 'this system differ' instead of 'differs' and 'introduced it's people' instead of 'introduced its people'. Because the run-on nature and lack of punctuation demand extra effort from the reader and frequently obscure sentence boundaries, the control of grammar and punctuation falls into the lower bands.
See this exact question answered at other band scores — the same prompt compared across bands.
Browse more IELTS Writing model answers or get your own writing scored by the same AI examiner.