The plans below show a college café before it was redesigned and how it looks now.
Sample Response
The two plans show the changes made to a college café.
Overall, the café has been enlarged and offers more food choices. The staff dining rooms have disappeared, while outdoor seating and several new service areas have been introduced.
Previously, the kitchen was in the north-west cornerupper-left corner, with a serving area immediately below it for food and drinkdrinks. Two small staff dining rooms stood in the middle of the northern side. Most of the remaining indoor area contained tables and chairs. The toilets were in the south-east cornerToilets were in the south-east corner beside the lift, and the entrance was on the eastern wall.
In the current layout, the kitchen is unchanged, but the former serving area has become a hot-meals counter. The space once occupied by the staff rooms now contains separate takeaway foodtakeaway-food and coffee barcoffee-bar sections. A salad bar has been installed on the western wall, and recycling binsvending machines are close to the entrance. The main indoor seating area remains central, although it is smaller because the café extends southwards. This new section has outdoor tables and a barbecue at the far left, whereas the toilets, lift and entrance remain in their original positions.
Why this response received Band 8.0
The response is strongest in its clear organisation and fluent, precise description of most major layout changes. Its main limitation is an important visual misreading: the lift was replaced by recycling bins, not retained, and no vending machines are shown. The highest-priority improvement is to verify every labelled feature against the plan before writing comparisons, especially when describing what remained unchanged.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The response presents a clear overview and covers most key changes, but it misidentifies the recycling bins and wrongly retains the lift.
Check each labelled feature against both plans so replaced and unchanged facilities are reported accurately.
Coherence and Cohesion
The response progresses logically from an overview to the earlier and current layouts, with cohesive comparisons and effective paragraphing.
Integrate the final comparisons by grouping all genuinely unchanged features separately from replacements.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is varied, precise, and natural across descriptions of location, replacement, and expansion.
Maintain this range while ensuring that labels such as recycling bins are reproduced exactly from the visual.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A wide range of sentence forms is used accurately and flexibly, with no notable impediment to communication.
Preserve this strong control while varying the structure of comparison clauses for further stylistic refinement.
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IELTS Academic Writing Task 1
The plans below show a college café before it was redesigned and how it looks now.
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.