Band 6.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.5 · Cambridge IELTS 16 · 2026-09-17

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 6.5)

Dear Sam,

I just wanted to write to you about finding accommodation near the university. The main reason for writing is to give you some advice about choosing a suitable place to live, and I wanted to tell you a little more about it.

To begin with, I would like to mention that I lived in a shared apartment close to the university. This is particularly relevant because it provides important information about the matter and helps to explain my circumstances more clearly.

Furthermore, I believe that university accommodation websites are the best option because they usually provide reliable information. I believe this is an important point to consider, as it may have a significant effect on the situation.

Finally, you should make sure that you check the location, total cost and rental conditions before choosing accommodation. I hope that this information will be useful and help to ensure that the matter is dealt with appropriately.

Thanks again for taking the time to read my letter. I hope the information I have given you is helpful, and it would be great to hear from you soon.

Best wishes,

Jay

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 6.5

The response covers all parts of the task well. You successfully addressed your friend Sam, described where you lived as a student by mentioning that you 'lived in a shared apartment close to the university', recommended accommodation websites, and warned him to 'check the location, total cost and rental conditions'. However, while the ideas are relevant, the tone and style are overly formal and repetitive for an informal email to a friend. Phrases such as 'This is particularly relevant because it provides important information' sound more like an academic essay than a message to a peer, which detracts slightly from the natural communicative purpose of a friendly letter. Despite this stylistic mismatch, all bullet points are clearly answered and supported, earning a solid band score for this criterion.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 6.5

The email is logically organised with a clear beginning, middle, and end, using standard paragraphing conventions. You used appropriate transitional markers and cohesive devices such as 'To begin with', 'Furthermore', and 'Finally' to structure your advice. However, the mechanical nature of these transitional phrases, combined with repetitive sentence structures, makes the overall flow feel a bit stiff and artificial rather than naturally cohesive. Referencing is generally clear, and the letter reads smoothly from one point to the next, but the heavy reliance on formulaic transitional phrases prevents it from achieving a higher score in this category. Overall, the logical progression is easy to follow.

Lexical Resource — Band 6.0

Your vocabulary is adequate for the task, with clear and accurate word choices such as 'accommodation', 'shared apartment', 'university', and 'rental conditions'. You attempted some less common phrases, but your vocabulary is largely functional rather than flexible. Furthermore, some of your phrasing is overly repetitive and unnatural for a personal email, such as repeating 'I believe this is an important point to consider' and using overly formal meta-language like 'provides important information about the matter'. There are no spelling or word-choice errors that impede communication, but the lack of idiomatic or natural conversational vocabulary keeps your score at a steady level.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 7.0

You demonstrate a good mix of simple and complex sentence forms, utilizing relative clauses and subordinate structures successfully. Sentences such as 'Finally, you should make sure that you check the location, total cost and rental conditions before choosing accommodation' are grammatically correct, well-punctuated, and communicate your message clearly. There are very few grammatical errors in the text, and your control over verb tenses and modal verbs is generally accurate. The major constraint is that the sentence patterns tend to follow a similar formulaic structure throughout the response, limiting the variety of complex structures displayed. Nonetheless, the high accuracy level across the text is commendable.

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

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