Band 6.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.5 · Cambridge IELTS 16 · 2026-09-26

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 Asha,

I hope you are doing great. First of all congrantulations on your new begining.I were at a same university when i studied. Trent university is well known educational organisation. I had lots of good memories over there. I used to live off campus rental house sharing with other classmates. It was nearby the university and quite affordable as well.

I will give you details of owner whom rental I used to live. Although you can find houses on different online portals like rentpanda, Facebook marketplace , different community groups etc.

There are numarious things which you need to be very carefull about . Foremost is always use offcial website to find accomodation and do not trust people without visiting the house . Second is make sure that you do lease aggrement because it would be beneficial for long term and you do not need to suffer for house for short term of period.

I wish you all the best for your new journey. You can ask me any further questions if you need .Anything for you my best friend.

Thank you.

Yours faithfully,

Aanal.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 7.0

You successfully covered all parts of the task prompt. You began with a warm greeting to your friend Asha, described where you used to live ('off campus rental house sharing with other classmates'), recommended specific methods for finding housing such as online portals like 'rentpanda' and community groups, and warned her about important mistakes like not visiting the house in person and failing to make a proper lease agreement. The tone is appropriately friendly and informal throughout the response. Although there are some minor spelling and grammatical slips, your ideas are fully relevant and directly address the requirements of a General Training Task 1 email. You have maintained a clear purpose throughout the letter, resulting in a solid performance for this criterion.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.5

Your letter shows a clear logical organisation and progression from the opening greetings to the description of past accommodation, recommendations, warnings, and finally the closing remarks. You used appropriate paragraphing to separate different topics, such as putting your housing recommendations and warnings into distinct paragraphs. Cohesive devices are used reasonably well, with transition markers like 'Although', 'Second', and 'Foremost' helping to structure your advice. However, some referencing is slightly clunky, as seen in sentences like 'I will give you details of owner whom rental I used to live.' Despite these occasional awkward transitions, the overall structure remains coherent and easy to follow.

Lexical Resource: Band 6.0

You demonstrated an adequate range of vocabulary suitable for an informal email about accommodation. You successfully used task-specific terms such as 'off campus', 'rental house', 'online portals', and 'lease agreement'. However, there are notable spelling errors and awkward lexical choices throughout the text, including 'congrantulations' instead of congratulations, 'begining' instead of beginning, 'numarious' instead of numerous, and 'carefull' instead of careful. Furthermore, phrases like 'whom rental I used to live' lack natural collocation and precision. While these errors do not impede overall communication, they prevent you from reaching a higher band score due to the frequency of spelling mistakes.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.5

You attempted a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, using relative clauses and conditional structures such as 'Although you can find houses on different online portals...' and '...because it would be beneficial for long term'. However, there are frequent grammatical errors and punctuation issues throughout the response. For example, you wrote 'I were at a same university' instead of 'I was at the same university', omitted articles in places ('on official website'), and constructed awkward relative clauses ('details of owner whom rental I used to live'). Punctuation spacing errors also appear around commas and full stops. While you show control over basic structures, the presence of frequent grammatical inaccuracies places your score in the mid-range.

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

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