Band 6.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.5 · Cambridge IELTS 17 · 2026-08-28

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

Some people think that it’s a good idea to socialise with work colleagues during evenings and weekends. Other people think it’s important to keep working life completely separate from social life.

Discuss both these views and give your own opinion.

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Student answer (Band 6.5)

Whether socializing with work colleagues during evening and weekends or keep the personal lives entirely separate is widely a debated topic. While maintain a relationship with colleagues fosters a supportive work environment maintaining firm boundaries is very essential to burnout stress and pressure.

Spending evenings and weekends with colleagues offers distinct professional and interpersonal benefits. Interacting in informal settings allows team members to build trust, improve communication and understand each other's personal strength and work styles. This rapport often builds better collaboration, smoother conflict resolution and higher morale during office hours. For example a employee works from home or relocated frequently rely on work socialising to establish a supportive social network and feel less isolated in their new environment.

On the other hand, maintaining a strict boundary line between work and social life is crucial for long term well-being. Socializing with colleagues on a frequent basis can create a toxic social network which include office politics and work pressure that leads to more mental stress and pressure. Furthermore, spending longer time with colleagues limits opportunities to nurture external relationships with family and non-work friends leading to an unbalanced social life.

In conclusion, although socializing with colleagues is always healthy to maintain a better relationship in work environment but at the same time, always create a boundary line between work and personal life. This leads to an employee to recharge mentally, resulting in greater job satisfaction and personal resilience over time. A great employee is one who leads with a balance approach.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 7.0

The response addresses all parts of the prompt, discussing both perspectives and providing a clear personal opinion. The ideas are relevant and generally well-developed, such as the mention of trust-building for the pro-socializing argument and the risk of burnout for the opposing view. However, the development is somewhat brief, and the conclusion could be more explicitly linked to the initial arguments to ensure a more cohesive final position. The response stays on topic throughout and maintains a consistent stance, meeting the requirements for a Band 7 level of task response.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 7.0

The essay is logically organized with a clear introduction, two body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Each paragraph has a central topic, and the progression of ideas is easy to follow. Cohesive devices such as 'On the other hand', 'Furthermore', and 'In conclusion' are used effectively to link ideas. However, there are minor issues with referencing and flow; for instance, the transition between the benefits of socializing and the example of relocated employees could be smoother. Overall, the paragraphing is appropriate and the logical flow is maintained throughout the text.

Lexical Resource — Band 6.5

The vocabulary is sufficient to convey the intended meaning clearly. There is an attempt to use more sophisticated collocations like 'fosters a supportive work environment', 'nurture external relationships', and 'personal resilience'. However, there are some minor inaccuracies in word choice and collocation, such as 'keep the personal lives' (should be 'keeping') and 'balance approach' (should be 'balanced approach'). While the range is adequate for the task, it lacks the consistent precision and flexibility required for a higher band score.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 6.0

The essay uses a mix of simple and complex sentence structures. While many sentences are clear, there are several grammatical errors that occur throughout the text, such as 'Whether socializing... or keep' (parallelism error), 'maintaining firm boundaries is very essential to burnout stress' (awkward phrasing), and 'a employee' (article error). These errors do not impede communication, but they are frequent enough to prevent the essay from reaching the 7.0 band, which requires more frequent error-free sentences and better control over complex structures.

See this exact question answered at other band scores — the same prompt compared across bands.

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