CD IELTS Prep
All band comparisons

Task 1 Academic · Map · Community

A town centre before and after redevelopment

Two maps of the same town centre, where the weakest answer describes each map in turn and the strongest describes only what moved.

The question

You should spend about 20 minutes on this task. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant. Write at least 150 words.

The maps below show the centre of the town of Fenwick before and after a programme of redevelopment.

What the two maps show
  • Both maps show the centre of Fenwick, with the River Ash running along the northern edge and Station Road crossing the map from west to east.
  • BEFORE: a large public car park occupies the whole north-west corner, between Station Road and the river.
  • AFTER: the car park has gone, replaced by a landscaped riverside park with a footpath along the bank.
  • BEFORE: a row of small shops runs along the south side of Station Road, in the centre of the map.
  • AFTER: the shops remain in the same position, but Station Road has been closed to traffic at both ends of the row and the street is now pedestrianised.
  • BEFORE: a factory with its own yard stands in the south-east corner.
  • AFTER: the factory and yard have been demolished; the site now holds two blocks of flats and a small playground.
  • BEFORE: the railway station stands in the east, immediately south of Station Road, with a goods yard beside it.
  • AFTER: the station remains, and a multi-storey car park has been built on the former goods yard beside it.
  • BEFORE: a primary school occupies the south-west corner, with open grass to its north.
  • AFTER: the school remains and has been extended northwards over the grass, with a new sports hall added.
  • AFTER: a new pedestrian bridge crosses the river in the north-east, linking the new park to the far bank. There was no crossing at this point before.

A 150-word factual summary of a graph, chart, table, process or map. This prompt is original, written in the standard format for teaching purposes — it is not taken from any past paper.

What separates the three answers

A map answer is scored on change, not on contents; the 6.5 answer inventories both maps, and the band 9 answer mentions only what is different and says what the differences add up to.

The three answers

Band 6.5

179 words (the task asks for at least 150)

The answer works. It addresses the task, the reader follows it, and the meaning survives — but ideas stay general, linking is mechanical, wording repeats, and small errors are visible throughout.

The answer

The two maps give information about the centre of the town Fenwick before and after it was redeveloped.

In the first map, there is a big public car park in the north-west corner, between the Station Road and the river. In the south side of the Station Road there are some small shops4, and in the south-east corner there is a factory with a yard. There is also a railway station in the east and a primary school in the south-west corner.

In the second map, there is a park near to the river instead of the car park2, and there is a footpath also. The shops are still there but now the cars can not go there. In the south-east they built two blocks of flats and a playground.3 There is a new car park with many floors beside the station, and the school became bigger with a new sports hall. Also they built a new bridge for the people in the north-east.

Overall, the town centre changed a lot after the redevelopment and it became more modern.1

What an examiner notices

  1. 1. Task achievement

    “Overall, the town centre changed a lot after the redevelopment and it became more modern.”

    An overview that could be attached to any redevelopment map in existence. What is needed is the direction of the change — industry and parking out, housing and open space in.

  2. 2. Coherence and cohesion

    “In the second map, there is a park near to the river instead of the car park”

    The one genuine comparison in the answer, and it only works because the car park was described so recently. Every other pairing is left to the reader.

  3. 3. Lexical resource

    “In the south-east they built two blocks of flats and a playground.”

    An invented agent doing the work a passive would do without one, and no acknowledgement that the factory had to be demolished first.

  4. 4. Grammatical range and accuracy

    “In the south side of the Station Road there are some small shops”

    Wrong preposition with a side, and an article before a proper noun. Both recur, which is what marks them as gaps rather than slips.

One honest caveat

Band labels here describe what each piece of writing demonstrates against the four published assessment areas, paraphrased in plain language. They are teaching illustrations produced for this site, not official material, and no sample has been marked by a test provider. Real scripts are marked whole; two answers with the same label can still look quite different from each other, and nothing on this page can promise anyone a particular result.

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