Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 15 · 2026-10-06

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 contains the data related to drinking habits of coffee and tea of people live in Australia. The chart shows the comparison of five cities of Australia over a 4 weeks duration for their consumption of hot beverages. My views are discussed below.

For the bar chart we can clearly see that the citizens of Australia prefer to drink coffee or tea in cafe. We can clearly see that the bar of people who went to cafe for coffee or tea in last week are higher in all cities except the city of Adelaide. Furthermore the percentage of fresh bought coffee over a duration of 4 weeks in all cities are below 45%. Which is low in all the 5 cities.

To discuss more, the the average of instant coffee is between 45% to 55% and purchase of instant coffee lies between people who choose cafe and people who choose fresh coffee.

To conclude, The Australian citizen likes to go to cafe for their hot beverages, more like a go to place for coffee or a tea. Also they choose instant coffee over fresh coffee.

AI examiner evaluation

CriterionBand
Task Achievement / Task Response5.5
Coherence and Cohesion5.5
Lexical Resource5.5
Grammatical Range and Accuracy5.0
Overall5.5

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5

The response addresses the task partially, attempting to present an overview of the data from the bar chart regarding coffee and tea habits across five Australian cities. However, the selection of information lacks precision and omits key data points. For instance, the writer states that fresh coffee consumption is 'below 45% which is low', but fails to report specific comparative figures or highlight distinct city extremes, such as Hobart's highest instant coffee rate or Melbourne's café preference. Furthermore, the inclusion of a personal remark ('My views are discussed below') is inappropriate for an Academic task, where an objective tone and direct entry into the summary are required. While the response attempts to outline main trends like café visits and instant coffee consumption, the development of ideas remains limited and under-developed, preventing it from reaching a higher band.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

There is some basic organisation in the response, featuring an introduction, body paragraphs, and a concluding sentence, but it lacks a clear overall progression. The movement between ideas feels somewhat disjointed, and transitional phrases are occasionally repetitive or mechanical, such as the frequent use of 'We can clearly see that' in the second paragraph. Paragraphing is attempted, but internal cohesion is weak. For example, the sentence 'Which is low in all the 5 cities' is a fragment incorrectly punctuated as a separate sentence. Referential links between sentences are also unclear at times, making the logical flow bumpy and impacting the overall readability of the text.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

The vocabulary used is limited but minimally adequate to convey the general topic of hot beverage consumption. The writer attempts some less common terms and task-related vocabulary, such as 'consumption', 'beverages', and 'citizens', but these are accompanied by noticeable errors in word choice and collocation. For instance, phrases like 'fresh bought coffee' instead of 'freshly bought coffee' or 'bought fresh coffee', and writing 'in cafe' without a necessary article ('in a café'), cause some awkwardness. Spelling is generally acceptable, but the repetitive use of basic lexical items restricts the range and precision needed to score higher.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The response demonstrates a very limited range of structures, relying mostly on simple sentences alongside a few awkward attempts at complex ones. Frequent grammatical errors are present throughout the text, including issues with subject-verb agreement ('people live in Australia' instead of 'people living in Australia'), missing articles ('in cafe'), and clumsy prepositional phrases ('over a 4 weeks duration'). Furthermore, sentence structures are sometimes incomplete or poorly joined, such as the sentence fragment starting with 'Which is low...'. These persistent errors and the lack of complex sentence control frequently cause difficulty for the reader and reflect a lower level of grammatical accuracy.

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