Band 5.0 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.0 · Cambridge IELTS 11 · 2026-09-18

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 5.0)

The table of statistiques illustrate the underground railway system in diffrent six cities.

Overall the table examine and showed that london ranked first with old date of opening with the largest route, ending by kyoto and Los Angeles with smallest kilometers of route.

Londen ranked at the top with the oldest citie of date opening by 1863 with largest kilometers of route 394km,and the passengers per year reached 775 milions.Fllowed by paris at 1900,the route les than londond for kilometers by 193 km,but it passed the number of her passengers per year with 1191 milions.at 1927 date opened of route in tokyo by reching the first place of Passengers per year exiding London and paris with 1927 millions.in contarst , for the followed years 1976 in washington ,koyto, and los Angeles the number of Passengers per year showed a dawnward trend the same decrasing for the kilometers of opening routs.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 5.5

The response covers all parts of the task by presenting the main features and making comparisons between the six cities. You successfully identified London as having the earliest opening date and largest route, while noting Tokyo's high passenger numbers and Kyoto/Los Angeles as having smaller networks. However, the overview is somewhat superficial and lacks full development of all comparative data points. Furthermore, there are some inaccurate interpretations of the data, such as stating that Tokyo exceeded London and Paris in passenger numbers (Tokyo has 1,927 million, whereas Paris has 1,191 million, but the comparison phrasing is slightly muddled). Overall, the response addresses the prompt adequately, achieving a Band 5.5 to 6.0 level of task fulfillment due to the minor inaccuracies and limited development of the overview.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 4.5

The essay attempts a logical structure with an introduction, overview, and body details, but the lack of proper paragraphing heavily disrupts the flow. The text is presented as one massive block of sentences, which makes it difficult to read. Cohesive devices are either missing or misused, with clumsy transitions such as 'ending by kyoto' and 'in contarst'. Referencing is also confusing in places, particularly with pronouns and dangling modifiers like 'the route les than londond for kilometers by 193 km'. While there is an overall attempt to group information chronologically or by size, the poor paragraphing and mechanical cohesion place this response firmly in the Band 4.0 to 5.0 range.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.0

Your vocabulary range is quite limited and heavily constrained by spelling and word choice errors. You attempted some less common vocabulary such as 'statistiques', 'downward trend', and 'decraing', but these contain frequent spelling errors ('statistiques' instead of statistics, 'diffrent' instead of different, 'milions' instead of millions, 'contarst' instead of contrast). Additionally, word forms are often awkward or incorrect, as seen in 'old date of opening' and 'the route les than londond'. Because these errors occur frequently and occasionally impede smooth reading, the vocabulary is characteristic of Band 5.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 4.5

The grammatical structures used are predominantly simple or attempted complex sentences that are heavily flawed. You made numerous punctuation and capitalization errors throughout the text, such as failing to capitalise 'london', 'paris', and 'tokyo'. Sentence structures often lack main verbs or are poorly constructed, such as 'The table of statistiques illustrate the underground railway system' (subject-verb agreement error with 'statistiques illustrate') and 'at 1927 date opened of route in tokyo by reching the first place'. There is a very limited range of error-free sentences, and the high frequency of grammatical mistakes places this criterion at Band 4.5.

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

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