Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 16 · 2026-09-14

IELTS Writing Task 1 question

A magazine wants to include contributions from its readers for an article called 'The book that influenced me most'.

Write a letter to the editor of the magazine about the book that influenced you most. In your letter

- describe what this book was about
- explain how this book influenced you
- say whether this book would be likely to influence other people

You do NOT need to write any addresses.

Begin your letter as follows:

Dear Sir or Madam,

Student answer (Band 5.5)

Dear Sir,

I hope you are doing well. I just heard you wants to include contribution from readers for an article called The book that influenced me most. So, I want a be part of this. Firstly, the name of book is Stay calm and reach the goal. This book is all about how we can achieve our goals in life and some skills for it. Moreover, as per the name this book teach people to keep your mind while the process reach out to the goal. In addition, if our mind is in angry mode or we are thinking about something else we will not able to achieve it.

However, this book help me to get my desire score in my final term of the master of management. I always keep my mind calm and focus on my dream score. This book will help many other people in the future.

Thank you for your time.

Warm regard,

Zainab Patel.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 6.0

You successfully addressed all three bullet points from the prompt. You described the book Stay calm and reach the goal as being about achieving life goals and teaching emotional control, explained how it helped you achieve your desired score in your master of management final term, and stated that it would likely help many other people in the future. However, the development of your ideas is somewhat limited and brief. For instance, the explanation of how the book influenced you could be expanded with more specific details about your study habits or mindset shifts. Nevertheless, you covered all parts of the task satisfactorily, earning a solid Band 6.0.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 5.5

Your letter has an overall logical progression and follows a clear friendly letter format, starting with an appropriate greeting Dear Sir, and ending with a sign-off. You used cohesive devices such as Firstly, Moreover, and In addition to link your sentences and ideas. However, paragraphing is underdeveloped; the entire body of the letter is compressed into a single dense block instead of being broken down into distinct paragraphs for each prompt requirement. Additionally, referencing is occasionally imprecise, such as in the sentence the process reach out to the goal. These issues place your performance at Band 5.5 for this criterion.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.0

You demonstrated an adequate vocabulary to communicate your message about goal achievement and keeping calm. You attempted some less common vocabulary, such as desire score (though intended as desired score) and process reach out. However, there are noticeable word choice and morphological errors throughout the text, such as wants instead of want, name of book instead of the name of the book, teach instead of teaches, and angry mode instead of an angry state of mind. These errors show a limited range of vocabulary with frequent inaccuracies, corresponding to a Band 5.0.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.0

You attempted a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, such as conditional and relative-style clauses (e.g., if our mind is in angry mode or we are thinking about something else we will not able to achieve it). However, your writing contains frequent grammatical errors, particularly missing articles (the name of book), subject-verb agreement issues (you wants, this book teach), and missing auxiliary verbs (we will not able). These errors occasionally cause difficulty for the reader and demonstrate weak control over basic grammatical structures, placing your grammar score at a Band 5.0.

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