Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 12 · 2026-10-02

IELTS Writing Task 1 question

There have been several complaints about the reception area where visitors to your company arrive. Your manager has asked you to suggest how the reception area could be improved.

Write a letter to your manager. In your letter

• describe the complaints that have been made
• say why the reception area is important
• suggest how the reception area could be improved

You do NOT need to write any addresses.

Begin your letter as follows:

Dear ................. ,

Student answer (Band 5.5)

Dear Manager,

We have received numerous complaints regarding the messy reception area and their is an urgent need to improve the area and here I am writing down some ideas to improve the reception area.

To commence, the washrooms should be kept open to all visitors for whole day, the customers have complainted that washrooms are closed after 6 in the evening, therefore, Urinals must be in usable and clean condition all the day.

Front desk area plays an integral part of our firm and we need to work on our customer handling skills. First of all, we need a female employee to handle the reception area with great communication and customer handling experience because reception attracts most number of buyers and it enlights the product and customer care experience after buying the product. I hope you value my suggestions and considerations

I am looking forward to hearing from you.

Your beloved employee,

Tarspreet

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5

The response addresses all parts of the prompt, successfully covering the complaints, the importance of the reception area, and suggestions for improvement. However, some ideas remain limited and under-developed. For instance, the mention of complaints is somewhat brief, and the suggestion about washrooms is presented generally without fully explaining the scope of the issue. The tone is mostly appropriate for a workplace letter, although the closing sign-off 'Your beloved employee' is rather unnatural for a professional context. To reach a higher level, each bullet point needs to be extended with further details and well-supported explanations rather than stated superficially.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.0

There is some overall organization, beginning with an opening statement of purpose and ending with a formal sign-off. However, the progression of ideas is restricted due to a heavy reliance on run-on sentences and comma splices, such as '...messy reception area and their is an urgent need...' and '...open to all visitors for whole day, the customers have complainted...'. Cohesive devices are used minimally or inaccurately, and paragraphing is underdeveloped, with the body of the letter crammed into overly dense blocks of text. To improve, the writer should break complex thoughts into distinct sentences and use clearer cohesive links to guide the reader smoothly through the letter.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

The vocabulary used is minimally adequate for the task, featuring basic workplace terms like 'reception area', 'visitors', and 'suggestions'. There are noticeable lexical errors, such as the spelling and word choice mistake 'complainted' instead of 'complained', and awkward phrasing like 'enlights the product'. Additionally, the phrase 'most number of buyers' is imprecise. While communication is not severely impaired, these vocabulary limitations and word form errors prevent the response from achieving a higher score. Incorporating a more precise and varied range of workplace vocabulary, alongside accurate collocations, would greatly strengthen this criterion.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.5

The text displays a very limited range of structures, relying mostly on compound sentences joined by commas rather than a controlled mix of simple and complex forms. There are frequent grammatical errors that can cause some difficulty for the reader, such as the homophone confusion in 'their is an urgent need' instead of 'there is'. Other errors include missing articles ('for whole day' instead of 'for the whole day', 'all the day' instead of 'all day') and prepositional inaccuracies. Punctuation control is also weak, leading to run-on sentences. To progress, the writer needs to demonstrate better control over basic agreement, articles, and sentence boundaries while incorporating accurate complex structures.

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