Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

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

IELTS Writing Task 1 question

Your friend has been offered a place on a course at the university where you studied. He/She would like your advice about finding a place to live.

Write an email to your friend. In your email

• describe where you lived when you were a student at the university
• recommend the best way for him/her to look for accommodation
• warn him/her of mistakes students make when choosing accommodation

You do NOT need to write any addresses.

Begin your email as follows:

Dear ..........,

Student answer (Band 5.5)

Dear John,

How are you today? I was delighted to hear about your admittion to my former school for a course of study, Am also ready to guide you as regards to securing accommodation as you requested.In college, apartment where you live to study is the first agenda in scale of preference after admittion,In my time, I lived in boys' hostel inside the campus.

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Living in the campus would be better for you as a first year student,so as to abreast urself with school environment before maybe making a choice to stay off campus,however the numerous benefits living in campus hostels ranging from electricity bills and other ultility is been settled for you by school management as against offcampus accomodations that occupants settles their ultility bills themselves, this condition would be comfortable for as a new student,

I would suggest you live in school accommodation for security purposes because, so many activities are taking place on campus and its' environment, ranging from cultism and some other ill group bullying activities, these groups activities are curtail on campus compare to living outside campus environment, where they have the liberty to operate without distractions.

Best wishes,

James.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 6.0

The response covers all three bullet points required in the prompt. You successfully described where you lived as a student (the boys' hostel inside the campus), recommended the best way to look for accommodation (living in school accommodation first), and warned your friend about potential risks on campus, specifically mentioning safety and avoiding negative groups. However, the development of ideas is somewhat limited and repetitive in places, particularly around utility bills and security. The tone is appropriate for an informal email to a friend, beginning with the requested greeting 'Dear John,'. Overall, the task is addressed adequately, fitting into the Band 6 descriptor where all parts are covered, though some ideas lack full extension and clarity.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 5.5

The letter maintains a coherent overall arrangement, and your ideas follow a logical sequence from greeting to describing your past experience, giving recommendations, and finally offering warnings. However, paragraphing is poorly managed; the text contains massive run-on sentences and lacks clear paragraph breaks, which disrupts the natural flow. Cohesive devices are occasionally misused or absent, and punctuation errors (such as missing spaces after commas and periods, e.g., 'requested.In college') make the referencing somewhat confusing at times. While the progression of ideas is understandable, the mechanical flaws in cohesion and paragraphing place this response firmly at Band 5.5.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.5

You demonstrate an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, attempting some less common words and phrases such as 'scale of preference', 'school management', and 'security purposes'. However, there are notable spelling errors and word-choice inaccuracies throughout the text, including 'admittion' instead of admission, 'ultility' instead of utility, 'urself' instead of yourself, and 'curtail' instead of curtailed. These lexical errors sometimes cause slight hesitation for the reader, though they do not completely impede communication. Because the vocabulary range is minimally adequate with noticeable slips in spelling and collocation, a Band 5.5 is appropriate.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.0

The writing contains a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, but control over grammar and punctuation is weak. There are frequent grammatical errors, such as run-on sentences linked incorrectly with commas (e.g., '...after admittion,In my time...', '...first year student,so as to...'), subject-verb agreement issues (e.g., 'utility is been settled', 'these groups activities are curtail'), and missing articles. Punctuation is frequently mishandled, and sentences often stretch on without proper boundaries. These persistent errors cause some difficulty for the reader and prevent the grammar score from reaching Band 6.0.

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

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