Band 6.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.5 · Cambridge IELTS 16 · 2026-10-05

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 Chidera,

How are you doing? I hope you are well and mentally ready to take on this new course of your life. Bells university is a great citadel of learning and i am very sure you would love it there.

I lived in Hall one as an undergraduate and i would say i had an amazing experience. It was a massive three storey building. It had modern facilities. It would built in such a way that would allow student experience home away from home. The bathroom had water heaters. The wardrobe was massive enough to accomodate every of your belonging. The internet was standard.

I would recommend you stay very active and check the portal 2 weeks before resumption. This is because hostels are allocated at that time and if you don't check on time, you might not be fortunate to get a good bedspace. However, if you want to stay off campus, there are agents who hang around the auditorium where you do your registeration.

One mistake students make is forgetting to pay their hostel levy early which would result in them loosing their space as it is allocated to another student. Another mistake is not verifying the agents who take them to get an apartment off campus. Some of them eventually get duped by these agents as the agents capitalise on them being naive.

I hope this helps and goodluck to you.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 7.0

You successfully address all parts of the task by describing your past student accommodation in Hall one, recommending the portal and agents as the best ways to find housing, and warning your friend about important mistakes such as missing levy deadlines and dealing with unverified agents. Your position is clear throughout the email, and the purpose is fully achieved in an appropriate friendly tone. The ideas are relevant and well-extended, showing a good understanding of what a general task requires. To move to a higher level, you could expand slightly more on the description of your room or the surrounding campus environment to give your friend an even more vivid picture, ensuring every bullet point is developed with equal depth.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 7.0

Your email demonstrates a clear logical organisation and progression throughout. You structure your response with an appropriate opening greeting and divide your ideas neatly into distinct paragraphs, each focusing on a specific part of the prompt: living experience, recommendations, and warnings. You use helpful cohesive devices and referencing words, such as 'This is because', 'However', and 'Another mistake', which guide the reader smoothly from one point to the next. While the flow is coherent and natural, making the structure slightly less mechanical in transitioning between paragraphs would help elevate the cohesion even further.

Lexical Resource: Band 6.0

You use an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, attempting some less common phrases such as 'citadel of learning', 'massive three storey building', and 'capitalise on them being naive'. Communication is clear throughout, and your vocabulary choices suit the friendly tone of an email to a peer. However, there are some minor word-choice and spelling inaccuracies, such as 'accomodate' instead of accommodate, 'every of your belonging' instead of all your belongings, and 'registeration' instead of registration. To achieve a higher score, you should focus on precision in spelling and collocations, reducing these minor slips.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 6.0

You demonstrate a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, utilizing structures like conditional clauses and relative clauses effectively, such as 'if you want to stay off campus' and 'agents who hang around the auditorium'. There are some errors in grammar and punctuation, including missing capitalisation on proper nouns ('Bells university'), a missing subject and auxiliary in 'It would built' instead of 'It was built', and an unnecessary comma splice or punctuation slip in places. These errors do not impede communication, but they prevent the grammar score from being higher. To improve, ensure tighter control over passive verb forms and subject-verb agreement.

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

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