Band 4.0 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 4.0 · Cambridge IELTS 15 · 2026-10-07

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 4.0)

The bar grapjh llustrates the proportion of coffee and tea buying and drinking habits in five cities in australia.

Overall, the people bought fresh coffee and instant coffee and went to a cafe for coffee or tea has the highest proportion in hobart. While adelaide has the least proportion.

In sydney, people bought

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 3.0

The response identifies the chart’s general subject and attempts an overview by comparing the cities, but the overview is inaccurate: Hobart does not have the highest proportion in all three categories, since Sydney leads fresh-coffee purchases, while Hobart has the highest instant-coffee figure and Melbourne is marginally highest for café visits. Adelaide is lowest for café visits, but not for every measure. The response gives no supporting figures or meaningful city-by-city comparisons, and it stops after the unfinished phrase “In sydney, people bought”. At 44 words, it is also well below the required 150 words; the nine words copied from the task prompt are excluded from this count. To improve, report the main patterns accurately and support them with selected figures.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 3.5

There is a basic attempt to organise the response: an opening sentence is followed by an overview, and “Overall” and “While” signal a move towards comparison. However, the final line, “In sydney, people bought”, is incomplete, so the response has no developed body or logical progression through the chart’s categories. The contrast introduced by “While” is also left as a fragment rather than being integrated into a complete sentence. This makes the relationships between the cities and measures difficult to follow. Use a clear introduction, a concise overview, and one or two body paragraphs grouped by category or by notable city comparisons, with complete sentences and clear links.

Lexical Resource: Band 4.5

The response uses a small set of relevant terms, including “proportion”, “fresh coffee”, “instant coffee” and “cafe”, so the chart’s subject is generally recognisable. However, the vocabulary is very limited for describing data: there are no terms for reporting percentages, ranking cities, or describing differences and trends. Some choices are also imprecise, such as “the people bought … has the highest proportion”, which does not clearly identify the measured share of residents. There are spelling and capitalisation slips in “grapjh”, “llustrates” and “australia”. Build a more varied, accurate set of chart-reporting expressions and check spelling and city names before finishing.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 4.5

The response attempts both a simple opening and a more complex comparison, but grammatical control is uneven. In “the people bought fresh coffee and instant coffee and went to a cafe … has the highest proportion”, the subject and verb do not agree, and the sentence structure makes it unclear what has the highest proportion. “While adelaide has the least proportion” is a dependent clause presented as a sentence, and “In sydney, people bought” is unfinished. The response also shows little range beyond basic sentence patterns. Practise writing complete comparisons with a clear subject and verb—for example, state which category or city records the highest or lowest percentage—and check agreement, sentence boundaries and punctuation.

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

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