Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 12 · 2026-08-30

IELTS Writing Task 1 question

You work at home and have a problem with a piece of equipment that you use for your job.

Write a letter to the shop or company which supplied the equipment. In your letter

• describe the problem with the equipment
• explain how this problem is affecting your work
• say what you want the shop or company to do

You do NOT need to write any addresses.

Begin your letter as follows:

Dear Sir or Madam,

Student answer (Band 5.5)

Dear Simar,

I hope this letter finds you in great spirits. I am sincerly appologizing for cancelling the plans at this end time.

I've been eagerly counting down the days until our upcoming plans. Life has thrown a bit of a carveball, and unfortunately i need to change the plan.

I can't tell you how dissappointed I am about this to cancel this trip. Since my uncle is coming next month to visit at my appartment, I have to be there at that time. He was supposed to visit this month, but his flight was cancelled due to some reason and now he booked his ticket for the next month.

However, I'm determined not to let this setback dampen our plans entirely. How about we consider rescheduling? What you think about to arrange this in coming winter breaks? I will make the reservation for the Ice hotel that we were planning to book. I will also buy the tickets for the Winter Carnival.

I hope you like these arrangements. I will see you soon.

With love,

Parwinder

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 2.0

The response is completely off-topic. The prompt explicitly asks for a letter to a company regarding a faulty piece of work equipment. Instead, the student has written a personal letter to a friend named 'Simar' about cancelling a trip. Because the student failed to address any of the bullet points (describing equipment, explaining work impact, or requesting action), the task achievement is severely compromised. Even though the letter is well-written in terms of tone and length, it does not fulfill the requirements of the task instructions provided.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 7.0

The letter is logically organized with clear paragraphing. The progression of ideas is easy to follow, and the writer uses cohesive devices such as 'However' and 'Since' to link sentences. While the content is irrelevant to the prompt, the internal structure of the letter itself is coherent and follows a standard informal letter format, which demonstrates a good grasp of paragraphing and logical flow.

Lexical Resource — Band 6.0

The vocabulary is generally appropriate for an informal letter. The student uses phrases like 'counting down the days', 'dampen our plans', and 'setback' effectively. There are some spelling errors, such as 'sincerly', 'appologizing', 'appologizing', and 'appartment', which slightly detract from the quality. However, the range is sufficient to express personal feelings and intentions clearly, showing a decent level of lexical control for this type of correspondence.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 6.0

The student demonstrates a mix of simple and complex sentence structures. There are some grammatical errors, such as 'What you think about to arrange this' (should be 'What do you think about arranging this') and 'at this end time'. Despite these errors, the meaning is always clear, and the punctuation is generally handled well. The control of verb tenses is mostly accurate, though there are occasional slips in sentence construction.

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

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