Band 6.0 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.0 · Cambridge IELTS 11 · 2026-10-06

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 6.0)

The given table provides insight into the underground railway systems in six different cities around the world.

Overall, the inaugration dates of underground railway systems across six different cities of Europe, America and East Asia are mentioned along with track length and capacity of passengers that it could accommodate each year. Tokyo has by far the most efficient railway transportation system while Kyoto handles the least passengers among six cities.

London's underground railway system was opened for public in 1863 which spanned for 394 kilometers, the longest railway track when compared with other cities, handling a substential amount of passengers with figures reported at 775 million per year. While Tokyo's railway network supports most passengers- 1927 million per year across the span of 155 kilometers, the Paris's railway network is also worth mentioning accounting for 1191 million passengers each year, just above London's network. Los Angeles's and Kyoto's network is limited in scale with 28 and 11 kilometer routes respectively, yet it performs effectively supporting 50 and 45 million passengers each year.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5

The response successfully addresses all parts of the prompt by presenting an overview and reporting the main features of the table, such as highlighting Tokyo's massive passenger volume and London's long history and route length. However, certain parts of the task are under-developed. For instance, the claim that 'Tokyo has by far the most efficient railway transportation system' is not supported by the data, as efficiency is not measured in the table. Furthermore, some comparisons lack precision, and key details like opening dates are only partially integrated into the broader analysis, placing this aspect of the report firmly within the mid-range of achievement.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

The essay demonstrates a coherent overall arrangement with a clear introduction, overview paragraph, and body paragraph detailing the data. Information is grouped logically by city, and cohesive devices are employed to connect ideas, such as using 'While' and 'yet' to contrast different railway networks. Nevertheless, cohesion is at times mechanical or slightly faulty, as seen in the slightly convoluted second paragraph where multiple cities are packed into long, run-on sentences without optimal paragraph breaks, causing referencing to occasionally feel less than seamless.

Lexical Resource: Band 6.0

The vocabulary used is adequate for the task, successfully conveying numerical data and general trends with terms like 'network', 'route', and 'capacity'. The writer attempts less common vocabulary with mixed success, resulting in some spelling and word-choice errors, such as 'inaugration' instead of 'inauguration' and 'substential' instead of 'substantial'. While these spelling slips and minor collocation inaccuracies do not impede communication, they prevent the lexical score from reaching a higher level.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 6.0

The text displays a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, incorporating relative clauses and participial phrases successfully in sentences like 'London's underground railway system was opened for public in 1863 which spanned for 394 kilometers'. There are some errors in grammar and punctuation, such as missing articles ('the Paris's railway network'), incorrect prepositions ('opened for public'), and unnecessary apostrophes ('Los Angeles's'). However, these errors are relatively infrequent and rarely impede communication, allowing the response to maintain a solid control over basic sentence forms.

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

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