Band 4.0 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 4.0 · Cambridge IELTS 16 · 2026-09-14

IELTS Writing Task 1 question

Mrs Barrett, an English-speaking woman who lives in your town, has advertised for someone to help her in her home for a few hours a day next summer.

Write a letter to Mrs Barrett. In your letter

• suggest how you could help her in her home
• say why you would like to do this work
• explain when you will and will not be available

You do NOT need to write any addresses.

Begin your letter as follows:

Dear Mrs Barrett,

Student answer (Band 4.0)

Dear sir,

I am writing to you regarding an important documents that I left in one of yours taxi.

Yesterday, when I was coming back from meeting. At that time, I took taxi from Toronto to Brampton. It was in the afternoon near about 5 pm. The taxi driver name was Mohan Singh. Unfortunately, I am not able to remember taxi number because I was quite tired.

This documents are very important for me since it has all the update and agreement details of the last meeting. I have to handover these papers to my manger, otherwise, It would be bad in perspective of my job.

I would be very thankful to you if you could find these documents in a priority basis. I works near to your head-office; therefore, I would be easy for me to pick up those documents from there.

I hope you understand the urgency of situation and contact me as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely,

Harshpreet Singh

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 2.0

The response completely fails to address the prompt instructions. Instead of writing a letter to Mrs Barrett to apply for a housework job by suggesting how to help, explaining reasons, and stating availability, the student has written a lost property letter to a taxi company regarding left documents. This is a severe off-topic submission for this specific task. According to the descriptors, when a response is completely unrelated to the bullet points and scenario provided, the task response is severely compromised. As a result, the score reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the prompt requirements.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 5.0

The letter follows a conventional format with a salutation and sign-off, and paragraphing is used to separate ideas such as the incident, the importance of the documents, and pickup arrangements. However, the logical progression is undermined by the irrelevant content. Cohesive devices are basic and sometimes misused, such as 'This documents' and referencing errors like 'one of yours taxi'. Paragraph transitions lack smooth links, though the text remains readable despite the severe content mismatch. Overall, the organizational structure meets the basic criteria for a letter format, but cohesion is hindered by grammatical and mechanical faults.

Lexical Resource — Band 4.5

The vocabulary used is very basic and repetitive. The student attempts some work-related and everyday terms such as 'documents', 'agreement details', 'urgency', and 'head-office', but struggles with accuracy and word choice. There are notable lexical errors throughout the text, including 'yours taxi' instead of 'your taxi', 'in a priority basis' instead of 'on a priority basis', and 'manger' instead of 'manager'. These errors reflect a limited control of word choice and collocation, restricting the lexical score to the lower-intermediate range.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 4.0

The response contains a very limited range of grammatical structures, relying mostly on simple sentences with frequent basic errors. Examples of grammatical inaccuracies include 'an important documents' (singular/plural mismatch), 'I took taxi' (missing article), 'The taxi driver name was' (possessive form error), and 'I works' (subject-verb agreement error). Punctuation and sentence boundaries are also handled poorly, such as sentence fragments ('Yesterday, when I was coming back from meeting. At that time...'). These persistent errors frequently strain the reader's understanding and demonstrate weak control over basic grammar.

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

Browse more IELTS Writing model answers or get your own writing scored by the same AI examiner.