Task 1: The Band 6 Ceiling
Why good English stops at band 6
The most frustrating score in IELTS, because nothing looks wrong.
A typical capped answer has accurate figures, correct grammar, reasonable vocabulary and no spelling mistakes. The candidate reads it back and cannot see the problem. That is precisely why the score does not move: the fault is not in the sentences, it is in what the answer does.
Task Achievement asks whether you summarised and selected. An answer that reports everything accurately has done neither. It is not a weaker version of a band 7 answer - it is a different activity, performed well.
The six habits below account for the overwhelming majority of capped answers. Every one is fixable in a single practice session.
The six ceilings
- 1. No overview, or one at the end. The most common by a distance. Task Achievement cannot reach the upper bands without one, and moving it costs nothing but habit. → Writing the Overview
- 2. Reporting everything. The instruction says select. An answer containing every figure has refused the task. → Selecting the Main Features
- 3. No grouping. Walking through the chart left to right, or year by year, reads as a list. Grouping is what makes it a description. → Body Paragraphs and Grouping
- 4. One verb, repeated. Four uses of increased limits Lexical Resource on its own, no matter how correct each one is. → The Language of Change
- 5. No comparison. The instruction asks for comparisons where relevant. Describing each category in isolation never makes one. → Numbers and Comparisons
- 6. Explaining why. Causes are invention. They cost words and earn nothing. → What the Question Asks
Diagnose your own answer
Take something you have written and answer these honestly. Each question targets one criterion.
Cover the chart. Could a reader sketch its rough shape from your second paragraph alone?
If not, you have no working overview - only a sentence that says things changed. This is the single highest-value fix available.
Count the figures in your answer. How many?
More than ten in a 170-word answer usually means listing. A band 8 answer typically uses fewer figures than a band 6 one, chosen rather than collected.
Can you finish the sentence: paragraph three is about... and paragraph four is about...?
If the answer is the first half of the chart and the second half, you have split rather than grouped.
How many different verbs of change did you use?
Fewer than four across an answer is a Lexical Resource cap, however accurate the writing is.
Does any sentence say because, due to, as a result of, or this is why?
Delete it. It is invention, and the words are needed elsewhere.
Mixed practice: question one
Twenty minutes, at least 150 words. Do not look at the other two until this one is finished.
Mixed practice: question two
A different form, the same method. Twenty minutes, at least 150 words.
Mixed practice: question three
No figures at all in this one. Twenty minutes, at least 150 words.
Mark your own three answers
- Give yourself a tick for each: an overview in paragraph two with no figures in it; two grouped body paragraphs; at least one explicit comparison; four or more different change verbs; no explanation of causes; over 150 words excluding anything copied.
- Six ticks on all three answers means the method has become automatic, which is the point at which timed practice starts producing band 7 reliably.
- Fewer than four ticks on any answer points straight at which lesson to reread - the six ceilings above are ordered by how much they cost.
- The habit that matters most is writing the overview before the body. Everything else follows from having decided the big picture first.
Where to go next
- The other half of the Writing test, and the one that carries more weight: Task 2: Opinion Essay.
- Managing the clock: Timing and Word Count.
- Want a tutor to mark these three answers properly? Book a free trial lesson and bring them with you.
Ready to practise this with a tutor?
Book a free trial and get your work marked against the official band descriptors.