Band 6.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.5 · Cambridge IELTS 13 · 2026-11-10

IELTS Writing Task 1 question

You work for an international company, and would like to spend six months working in its head office in another country. Write a letter to your manager. In your letter

You do NOT need to write any addresses.

Begin your letter as follows:

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

Student answer (Band 6.5)

Dear Dr Raphael,

I am writing this letter to inform you that I would like to be transferred to our head office in Switzerland to work for 6 months. The reason is that I discovered that they been surpassing their monthly and yearly target for past 3 years consecutively in which I would like to learn from them to replicate such in our branch.

I have an intern with me who is going to assist me during my absence who only needs little supervision. Moreover, he was the one who handle our October sales when I was seriously ill, so I believe he is capable.

However, I would need your assistance in informing the senior management team regarding this. I would appreciate if you inform them in the next Monday meeting. If I need to write any letter for approval, please inform me on that.

I look forward to hearing from you shortly.

Yours sincerely,

Kehinde.

AI examiner evaluation

CriterionBand
Task Achievement / Task Response7.0
Coherence and Cohesion7.0
Lexical Resource6.5
Grammatical Range and Accuracy6.0
Overall6.5

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 7.0

You address all three points clearly: you explain that you want to learn from the Swiss office’s performance, propose that your intern cover your duties, and ask your manager to raise the request with senior management. The example of the intern handling October sales gives useful support for your proposal, and the purpose of the letter remains clear throughout. To make the request more fully developed, explain what you hope to learn or how the experience would benefit the company, and give a little more detail about how the intern would manage your responsibilities over six months. A more explicit request for your manager’s help with the transfer arrangements would also strengthen the final point.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 7.0

The letter has a clear progression: the opening states your request and reason, the next paragraph explains how work could be covered, and the final body paragraph asks for assistance. Paragraphing is appropriate, and linking expressions such as “Moreover” and “However” help signal relationships between ideas. The closing is also suitable for a formal letter. Some connections could be more precise: “However” suggests a contrast, although the paragraph mainly adds a request, and “this” in “informing the senior management team regarding this” could refer more explicitly to the proposed six-month transfer. Use transitions that match the relationship between points and make references unmistakable to improve the flow further.

Lexical Resource: Band 6.5

Your vocabulary is adequate for the purpose and includes some appropriately formal choices, such as “transferred,” “senior management team,” and “assistance.” Phrases like “monthly and yearly target” and “replicate” show an attempt to express the business context precisely, though some combinations are not fully natural. “They been surpassing” also contains a word-form/verb-form problem, while “handle our October sales” would be more idiomatic as “handled our October sales”; these affect grammatical accuracy rather than vocabulary. To strengthen lexical control, choose more natural business collocations and avoid vague wording such as “replicate such.” Overall, meaning remains clear, but precision and naturalness are not consistent throughout.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 6.0

You use a mix of simple and more complex sentence forms, including the relative clause in “an intern with me who is going to assist me” and the conditional “If I need to write any letter for approval.” The message is generally understandable, but some grammatical errors remain. For example, “they been surpassing” needs an auxiliary (“they have been surpassing”), and “for past 3 years” needs an article (“for the past three years”). In “he was the one who handle,” the verb should be “handled.” There are also issues in “I would appreciate if you inform them,” where a more accurate construction is “I would appreciate it if you could inform them.” More consistent control of verb forms, articles, and conditional request structures would improve accuracy.

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