## Band Scores - Task Response: 6.0 - Clear position ("partly agree") held throughout, and both sides are addressed. Ideas are relevant but developed with repetition ("free education is popular and successful policy" is asserted, not argued). The conclusion adds a new idea (scholarships) that the body never examined. - Coherence and Cohesion: 6.0 - Four-paragraph structure is logical and paragraphing is sound. Linking is mechanical ("Firstly", "However", "In addition") and referencing slips ("this students", "This way"). - Lexical Resource: 5.5 - Adequate range for the task ("tuition fees", "scholarships", "facilities") but frequent word-choice and collocation errors ("improve their lifes", "cost too much for the country") and spelling errors ("succesful", "countrys", "dont"). - Grammatical Range and Accuracy: 5.5 - Mix of simple and complex sentences, but error density is high: subject-verb agreement ("many people thinks", "it have"), articles, and verb forms ("government pay", "students maybe not study"). - OVERALL BAND: 6.0 ## Error Log 1. "many people thinks" -> "many people think" (subject-verb agreement) 2. "I am partly agree" -> "I partly agree" (verb form) 3. "it have good points" -> "it has good points" (subject-verb agreement) 4. "give opportunity" -> "gives opportunities" (verb agreement + article/plural) 5. "this students" -> "these students" (determiner agreement) 6. "improve their lifes" -> "improve their lives" (spelling/plural) 7. "the universities is free" -> "universities are free" (article + agreement) 8. "many international students goes" -> "many international students go" (agreement) 9. "succesful policy" -> "successful policy" (spelling) 10. "even they dont go" -> "even if they do not go" (conjunction + contraction register) 11. "other countrys" -> "other countries" (spelling/plural) 12. "dont cost too much for the country" -> "would not cost the country too much" (verb form + collocation) ## Sentence Upgrades 1. Before: "Firstly, free university education give opportunity to poor students." After: "Firstly, abolishing tuition fees would open higher education to applicants from low-income backgrounds." Why: precise verb ("abolishing"), collocation ("open ... to"), and a more formal noun phrase. 2. Before: "If government pay for all students, it will cost too much money." After: "If the state funded every student's degree, the fiscal burden would fall on all taxpayers." Why: correct agreement, and "fiscal burden" is band-8 vocabulary for cost arguments. 3. Before: "They will just waste time and government money." After: "Without a financial stake in their studies, some students may treat a degree as an entitlement rather than an investment." Why: turns a blunt claim into a developed, hedged argument with precise register. ## Band 9 Model Answer (250+ words - full model answer in final listing; argument: targeted means-tested funding beats universal free tuition, with Germany counter-example addressed, progressive-taxation fairness point, and human-capital externality acknowledged.) ## Examiner's Advice 1. Fix subject-verb agreement first: 6 of your 12 errors are agreement slips; eliminating them alone typically lifts GRA from 5.5 to 6.5 - exactly what you need for a 7.0 overall. 2. Replace memorised linkers ("Firstly/However/In conclusion") with natural signposting inside the sentence; examiners treat template linking as a 6.0 signal. 3. Develop one idea per paragraph fully instead of listing several; your second body paragraph raises three points and argues none - depth is what separates 6 from 7 in Task Response.