Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 16 · 2026-09-16

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

Many manufactured food and drink products contain high levels of sugar, which causes many health problems. Sugary products should be made more expensive to encourage people to consume less sugar.

Do you agree or disagree?

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

Student answer (Band 5.5)

modern research has shown that sugar is one of the major cause of diabetes nowadays. It acts as a sweet poison which we take in our daily deit with our own will. We almost consume sugar daily in our meals.

We have been so much dependant on factory manufactured and processed foos that we have forgot the value and benefits of the natural food just because it requires more effort than the processed food. We have eliminated all the sources of natural sugar like fruits, dairy milk, honey, and the list goes on, and moved toward artificially made juices, energy drinks, cereals etc. And this is the reason why the farmers and dariy farm businesses have been through a decline in recent years.

On contemporary, this has benefited the manufacturers of processed foods and sugar mills, the plants and factories selling diabeties actually. These factories make a range of products from baby milk formulas, cereals to drinks and snacks containing sugar.

Some researches have claimed that some major manufacturers pay the researchers for compaining in support of their manufactured products and recommend their products to people through fake surveys researches and digital marketing. In this way these giants sell their products containg sugar without people noticing and deteriorate health of hundered of million people worldwide.

Even some researchers claim that some giant companies delibrately add sugar to baby products that would be shipped to third world countries to make children of these countries exposed to sugar without people realizing so these children have more chances of being diagnosed with diabetes which will boost vaccine sales and will make medical business profitable.

Making sugary products more expensive wont solve the problem in my opinion. Rather we need to educate people especially, from the third worl countries, to know what they are eating, how it would affect their and their children's health. To educate them will alow them to underdtand the health risks they are prone to and provide them with the natural sources of sugar like fruits, honey, sugarcane etc. This, I think, is the right way to encourage people to consume less sugar from the processed food and move toward the natural sources of sugar. This won't only improve their health but also would be beneficial for their local businesses and job market as this will allow farmers and agricultural business to thrive creating more jobs for their local people and a better lifestyle.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 5.5

The response presents a clear position that disagrees with making sugary products more expensive, offering education as an alternative solution. However, the development of ideas relies heavily on unsubstantiated and somewhat extreme conspiracy-like claims, such as manufacturers paying researchers to campaign and deliberately shipping sugary baby products to third-world countries to boost vaccine and medical sales. While these ideas attempt to address the wider context of processed food and health issues, they lack logical, real-world grounding and detract from a balanced economic argument. Consequently, the task response is partially limited by the nature of the arguments presented, aligning best with a Band 6.0.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 5.5

The text is generally coherent and follows an overall argumentative structure, moving from the problem of sugar consumption to industry practices, and finally to the writer's proposed solution. Paragraphing is utilised, although some paragraphs are quite long and dense, grouping multiple complex ideas together. Cohesive devices are used, such as 'On contemporary' (which should be 'Conversely' or 'Contrarily'), 'In this way', and 'Rather', but referencing and transitions are at times mechanical or slightly confusing. The flow is hindered by awkward transitional phrases and repetitive sentence openings, making the progression less smooth than required for a Band 7.0.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.5

The student displays an adequate vocabulary range to communicate ideas about health, nutrition, and industry practices, using terms like 'processed foods', 'diabetes', 'artificially made juices', and 'agricultural business'. However, there are frequent errors in word choice, collocation, and spelling throughout the text. Examples include 'deit' instead of diet, 'dariy' instead of dairy, 'forgot' instead of forgotten, 'compaining' instead of campaigning, 'containg' instead of containing, and 'delibrately' instead of deliberately. Furthermore, phrases like 'sweet poison' are somewhat informal for an Academic task. These lexical inaccuracies prevent the score from reaching higher bands.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.5

The writer attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, incorporating relative clauses and conditional elements (e.g., 'to make children of these countries exposed to sugar without people realizing so these children have more chances of being diagnosed...'). However, grammatical accuracy is inconsistent. There are numerous errors in verb forms, articles, prepositions, and sentence construction, such as 'major cause of diabetes' (causes), 'dependant' (dependent), 'has been through a decline' (declined), and punctuation errors like run-on sentences. While meaning is generally recoverable despite these errors, the high frequency of grammatical lapses keeps the score at Band 5.5.

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