Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer
Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 15 · 2026-10-01
IELTS Writing Task 1 question
The chart below shows the results of a survey about people’s coffee and tea buying and drinking habits in five Australian cities.
Summarize the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
Student answer (Band 5.5)
The bar chart illustrates the results of a survey about coffee and tea buying and drinking habit of individuals in an Austrilian cities: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Hobart.
Overall, going to a cafe for coffee or tea had greater proportion in every cities, with Melbourne and Hobart recording the highest. Buying fresh coffee had lower proportion in every cities, Brisbane recording the lowest.
In Sydney,the percentage of peoples buying fresh coffee is around 44%, buying instant coffee is around 46% and going to a cafe is around 61%. In Melbourne, the percentage of peoples buying fresh coffee is around 43%, buying instant coffee is around 49% and going to a cafe is around 63%, followed by Hobart, at 38% people buying fresh coffee, 54% people buying instant coffee and 63% people going to a cafe. Melbourne and Hobart had same percentage of peoples going to a cafe.
Brisbane and Adelaide had similar percentage of peoples buying fresh coffee, which is approx 34%. Brisbane had also higher percentage of people going to cafe at around 55% comparing with Adelaide at 49%.
AI examiner evaluation
| Criterion | Band |
|---|---|
| Task Achievement / Task Response | 6.0 |
| Coherence and Cohesion | 5.5 |
| Lexical Resource | 5.0 |
| Grammatical Range and Accuracy | 5.0 |
| Overall | 5.5 |
Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.0
The response successfully addresses all parts of the task by reporting the main features of the coffee and tea habits across the five Australian cities. An overview is provided, noting the general dominance of café visits and the lower figures for fresh coffee. Key comparisons are made, such as highlighting Melbourne and Hobart recording the highest café attendance and Brisbane recording the lowest fresh coffee purchases. However, some ideas are under-developed or lack precise support; for instance, the body paragraphs slip into a somewhat repetitive listing of individual city percentages rather than fully synthesising the comparative trends. Nevertheless, all required visual data elements are adequately covered, positioning the content solidly within the expected parameters for this level.
Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5
The response maintains a coherent overall arrangement with a clear attempt to structure the data geographically and categorically. Information is introduced with an introductory paragraph, followed by an overview, and then body paragraphs detailing city data. However, the progression is sometimes mechanical and lacks smooth transitional links between sentences and paragraphs. Referencing is occasionally repetitive, relying heavily on phrases like 'the percentage of peoples' to introduce new data points. Paragraphing is present, but grouping cities together could have been managed more logically to ensure a more fluid progression of ideas throughout the response.
Lexical Resource: Band 5.0
The vocabulary used is adequate for the task, successfully conveying basic statistical concepts and categories from the chart, such as 'percentage', 'survey', and the various coffee habits. There are some attempts at less common vocabulary, but these are accompanied by lexical inaccuracies and spelling errors, such as writing 'Austrilian' instead of 'Australian', 'habit' instead of 'habits', and repetitive use of 'peoples' instead of 'people'. Word choice is generally functional, allowing the reader to understand the data, but limitations in range and occasional awkward collocations prevent the response from achieving a higher level of lexical precision and fluency.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0
The writer employs a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, such as introductory dependent clauses ('Overall, going to a cafe...'). However, there are noticeable grammatical errors throughout the text, including pluralisation and subject-verb agreement issues (e.g., 'every cities' instead of 'each city' or 'all cities', 'had greater proportion', 'is around 44%'). Punctuation lapses are also present, such as missing spaces after commas (e.g., 'Sydney,the percentage'). While these errors do not severely impede overall communication, they occur frequently enough to demonstrate limited control over more complex grammatical patterns and agreement rules.
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