Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer
Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 14 · 2026-09-16
IELTS Writing Task 2 question
Many people work long hours, leaving very little time for leisure activities.
Does this situation have more advantages or more disadvantages?
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.
Student answer (Band 5.5)
In this Modern era, many people work long hours beacuse of demanding jobs, finanical responsibilites and desire to achieve success in career. As result, they left with limited time for leisure activites.Although working longer hours can provide some benefits in starting but later on can lead to serval negatiuve effects.
One major advantage of working long hours shifts is that people can earn more moeny and improve their social status by affording better housing, education, and other necessities. In addition, spending more hours at workplace may help employee to gain more valuable experience and develop their professional skills. For instance, person working in company but stay more than normal hours at work which indifrectly, helping me to gain more knoweldge and experience as compore to employees who go home early.
However, there are significant disadvantages to have little free time. The most obvious one is that people may struggle to maintain a healthy work life balance, if employees spend most of their day at work, they may have insufficient time to exercise.Overtime, this can lead to stress, tiredness. Moreover, lack of time with love ones will become a weaken personal realtionship,particularly when people are constantly busy with work.
In conclusion, working longer hours can provide some benefits and apportunties for carrer development, but it can also be dangerous for realtionship. Therefore, maintainig a resonable balance between professional responsibilites and personal life in curcial.
AI examiner evaluation
| Criterion | Band |
|---|---|
| Task Achievement / Task Response | 5.0 |
| Coherence and Cohesion | 6.0 |
| Lexical Resource | 5.0 |
| Grammatical Range and Accuracy | 5.0 |
| Overall | 5.5 |
Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 5.0
The response addresses the prompt by discussing both the advantages and disadvantages of working long hours, presenting a clear position throughout. Ideas are supported with reasons, such as earning more money and gaining professional skills, alongside the drawbacks of work-life balance issues and strained relationships. However, the explanation in the body paragraphs tends to be somewhat repetitive and lacks full development. Furthermore, the length requirement has not been met, as the essay contains 233 words, falling short of the 250-word minimum. This under-length issue prevents the response from achieving a higher band score, as full task development is consequently restricted. Overall, it addresses the prompt adequately but suffers from under-development and word-count penalties.
Coherence and Cohesion — Band 6.0
The essay is organised into four paragraphs, following a logical structure with an introduction, two body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Cohesive devices are employed to connect ideas, such as 'In addition', 'For instance', 'However', and 'In conclusion'. However, referencing and transitions are sometimes faulty or mechanical, as seen in phrases like 'As result, they left with limited time' and 'For instance, person working in company... helping me'. Paragraphing is used sufficiently, but overall progression within paragraphs is occasionally hindered by abrupt shifts and grammatical errors that disrupt the flow of reading. The essay demonstrates sufficient coherence to earn a band 6, although mechanical cohesion limits its higher potential.
Lexical Resource — Band 5.0
The student attempts a range of vocabulary appropriate for the topic, including terms like 'financial responsibilities', 'professional skills', and 'work-life balance'. However, there are numerous spelling, word-choice, and collocation errors throughout the text, such as 'beacuse', 'finanical', 'activites', 'serval negatiuve', 'moeny', and 'realtionship'. Additionally, some phrasing is awkward or unnatural, such as 'stay more than normal hours at work which indifrectly, helping me'. While the vocabulary used is minimally adequate for the task, these frequent lexical and spelling inaccuracies restrict the score to a band 5.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.0
The response displays a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, attempting structures such as conditional and participial clauses (e.g., 'Although working longer hours can provide...'). However, grammatical accuracy is weak, with frequent errors in articles, subject-verb agreement, and tense consistency. Examples include 'they left with limited time', 'working long hours shifts', 'stay more than normal hours', and 'disadvantages to have little free time'. Punctuation is also problematic in places, with missing spaces and comma splices. Because these errors occur frequently and occasionally impede smooth reading, the grammar performance aligns with band 5 descriptors.
See this exact question answered at other band scores — the same prompt compared across bands.
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