Band 6.5 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.5 · Cambridge IELTS 13 · 2026-11-04

IELTS Writing Task 1 question

You recently organised an all-day meeting for your company, which took place in a local hotel. In their feedback, participants at the meeting said that they liked the hotel, but they were unhappy about the food that was served for lunch.

Write a letter to the manager of the hotel. In your letter

• say what the participants liked about the hotel
• explain why they were unhappy about the food
• suggest what the manager should do to improve the food in future

You do NOT need to write any addresses.

Begin your letter as follows:

Dear Sir or Madam,

Student answer (Band 6.5)

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing to express my dissatisfaction about food that was served for lunch while our meeting. Although paricipants at the meeting liked the hotel, they were not satisfied with the quality of food.

Participants liked the hotel, particularly infrastructure and atmosphere. What they likes most about hotel is the furniture, which was quite comfortable for long meetings.

Unfortunately, quality of the food that was served during lunch was really disappointed. Rice was too oily and salty, and the chicken was also not looking fresh. Moreover, people experienced some unpleasant odor in the food, making participants totally uncomfortable.

To solve this situation, Management should arrange fresh ingredients and prepare fresh food for customers. It would also be great if you could hire professional cooking staff, as it would help to improve the repuation of the hotel. I would appreciate it if you could investigate the food prepration techniques as well.

I hope these techniques would help you and I look forward to your prompt response.

Yours faithfully,

Rupinder

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 7.0

You address all three points in the task: you identify what participants liked, explain their complaints about lunch, and suggest ways to improve it. The details about the comfortable furniture and the oily, salty rice make the feedback specific, while the recommendations to use fresh ingredients and hire professional cooking staff are relevant. Your purpose and polite, formal tone are clear throughout. To make the ideas more fully developed, explain briefly how the hotel’s atmosphere or facilities supported the meeting, and give a more concrete food-related action, such as checking freshness and seasoning before serving. The complaint about the chicken and unpleasant odour is clear, but could be linked more explicitly to the participants’ overall experience.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.5

The letter has a clear overall arrangement: it opens with the purpose, describes the positive aspects, explains the food problem, and then offers recommendations. Paragraphing helps the reader follow these stages, and transitions such as “Unfortunately,” “Moreover,” and “To solve this situation” make the progression easy to recognise. This is a coherent structure, though some linking is a little mechanical and there is minor repetition of “participants” and “food.” The final sentence, “I hope these techniques would help you,” is not fully clear because “these techniques” refers back to several different suggestions. Use a more precise reference, such as “I hope these measures will improve the lunch service,” and vary repeated nouns where possible.

Lexical Resource: Band 6.0

You use an adequate range of vocabulary for a formal complaint, including “dissatisfaction,” “unpleasant odor,” “fresh ingredients,” and “professional cooking staff.” These choices communicate the main points, and the tone is generally appropriate. There are, however, some inaccurate word choices, collocations, and spelling errors that limit precision: “quality of food … was really disappointed” should describe the food as “disappointing,” while “reputation” and “preparation” are misspelled. “Infrastructure” is also rather broad for describing hotel features; “facilities” would be more natural here. Aim to choose precise, natural combinations of words and proofread spelling, especially in key recommendations and descriptions of the complaint.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 6.0

You use a mix of simple and more complex sentence forms, including the contrast in “Although participants at the meeting liked the hotel” and the conditional request “I would appreciate it if you could investigate…”. Most sentences remain understandable, but some grammatical errors reduce accuracy. For example, “while our meeting” needs a preposition and article (“during our meeting”), and “What they likes most” has incorrect subject–verb agreement (“What they liked most”). The sentence about the food being “really disappointed” also has a faulty grammatical form; the food should be described as “disappointing.” Review verb agreement, articles, and sentence patterns, and check that each sentence has a clear, correctly formed subject and verb.

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