Band 6.0 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.0 · Cambridge IELTS 15 · 2026-10-02

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 6.0)

The bar chart compares the percentages of residents in five Australian cities who bought fresh coffee, bought instant coffee and visited a cafe in the previous four weeks.

Overall, visiting a cafe was the most popular activity in four of five cities, while buying fresh coffee was the least common choice in every city. The proportions of people purchasing instant coffee were generally higher than that of those prefering fresh coffee.

The attendance of cafe in Melbourne where just over 60% of residents had visited a cafe in the previous four weeks. Sydney followed closely at 61%, however, the figures for Brisbane and Hobart were around 55% and 63%, respectively. Adelaide recorded the lower percentage, at just under 50%.

With regard to coffee purchasers, buying instant coffee was consistently popular than buying fresh coffee. Approximately 54% of people in Hobart purchased instant coffee, making it the highest figures among the five cities, followed by Brisbane at about 53%. The proportions in Melbourne, Sydney, and Adelaide were around 46%, 45%, and 44%, respectively.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5

The response addresses all parts of the task by selecting and reporting the main features of the chart, providing a clear overview and making relevant comparisons across the five cities. However, some areas are under-developed or contain minor inaccuracies in data interpretation. For instance, the cafe attendance figure for Melbourne is awkwardly introduced as 'The attendance of cafe in Melbourne where just over 60%', leaving the sentence grammatically incomplete. Furthermore, the description of Hobart and Brisbane cafe figures contains a slight misreading of the visual data, stating Hobart was around 63% when it was actually closer to 63% for Melbourne and 63% for Hobart, while Adelaide is incorrectly said to record 'the lower percentage' rather than the lowest. These lapses prevent the response from achieving a higher band, as certain details require more precise reporting and clearer extension.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.0

The response presents a coherent overall arrangement with a clear logical progression from an introductory overview to body paragraphs detailing cafe visits and coffee purchasing habits. Paragraphing is used appropriately to separate different categories of data. However, cohesion is at times mechanical or faulty. For instance, the transition in the third paragraph lacks a main verb ('The attendance of cafe in Melbourne where just over 60%...'), which disrupts the flow of information. Additionally, referencing is occasionally unclear, and cohesive devices are somewhat basic, relying on standard sequencing phrases like 'With regard to' and 'followed by', demonstrating the characteristics of a solid intermediate level.

Lexical Resource: Band 6.5

The student uses an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, attempting some less common items and topic-specific terminology such as 'percentages', 'residents', 'purchasers', and 'proportion'. There are some successful word choices and collocations that communicate the message effectively. However, inaccuracies in word choice and form do occur, such as writing 'prefering' instead of 'preferring', 'lower' instead of 'lowest', and 'popular than' instead of 'more popular than'. Despite these occasional errors and spelling slips, communication is not impeded, reflecting a competent control of vocabulary that satisfies the requirements for this band level.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 6.0

The writing demonstrates a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, attempting relative clauses and introductory prepositional phrases. There are some error-free sentences, particularly when describing basic comparisons. However, grammatical control is inconsistent, featuring errors such as the sentence fragment in the third paragraph ('The attendance of cafe in Melbourne where just over 60% of residents had visited a cafe in the previous four weeks'), missing articles, and awkward prepositional usage. Punctuation is generally acceptable, but the structural errors in complex sentences indicate that grammatical accuracy is limited to a moderate level, preventing the sustained error-free output characteristic of higher bands.

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