Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 16 · 2026-10-01

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 Alex,

I hope you are doing well.

I just received an email from your your end in regards to the advice you were asking with regard to the finding a place to live during your stue

Please note that during my time as a student, I used to live in the university provided subsidised accomodation where I lived in the 1 bedroom hall accomodation, and which I shared with the anorther person.

I would recommend to contact the admission or admin team in helping to find the accomodation for you in the unversity premises. The accomodation nearby university would help you to focus on studies, without wasting to much time on the travel.

While choosing the accomodaton, do keep in your mind that the studentwhich will be sharing the apartment with you, must be considerate and serious with the studies as well.

I hope you can be benefitted from the above advices.

Kind regards,

Moiz

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5

The response addresses the three bullet points of the task partially, meeting the basic requirements for the format of a general email. You successfully describe where you lived as a student by mentioning university-provided subsidised accommodation and sharing a room. You also recommend contacting the admission or admin team and warn about choosing considerate roommates. However, some ideas remain somewhat limited and under-developed, such as the warning about mistakes students make, which lacks specific detail or elaboration. The tone is appropriate for writing to a friend, but the development of points sits securely at this level due to the lack of extended support for your recommendations and warnings.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

There is some basic organisation in the email, with an appropriate opening greeting and a polite sign-off. However, there is a lack of clear overall progression between the body paragraphs, and the logical flow is occasionally disrupted by awkward phrasing and mechanical transitions. While basic cohesive devices are attempted, referencing is sometimes unclear, such as in the abrupt shift between discussing university accommodation and warning about roommate behaviour. Paragraphing is used to separate ideas, but the internal cohesion within paragraphs requires better linking to guide the reader smoothly through the advice.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

The vocabulary used is limited but minimally adequate to convey the message about student housing. There are noticeable errors in word choice, word form, and spelling throughout the text, such as 'accomodation', 'anorther', 'stue', and 'beenfitted'. Additionally, phrasing like 'with regard to the finding a place' and 'too much time on the travel' demonstrates awkward collocations. While these errors do not completely obscure meaning, they cause some difficulty for the reader and prevent the response from reaching a higher level of lexical control.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The text displays a limited range of grammatical structures, relying mostly on simple sentences alongside some attempts at complex forms that often contain errors. There are frequent mistakes in articles, prepositions, and grammatical patterns, such as 'the university provided subsidised accomodation', 'recommend to contact', and 'the studentwhich will be sharing'. Furthermore, punctuation and sentence boundary issues, such as the run-on structure in the second sentence, occur regularly. These frequent errors require the reader to decode the meaning at times and reflect the grammar profile of this band.

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