Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 16 · 2026-09-24

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)

Recently, an increasing debate occures about the consumption of sugar products. Some people believe that these products should cost more than what it cost now to reduce the consumption of these products, on the other hand, many individuals do not agree with this idea.

First, people who support this idea believe that this trend is the best way to make the amount of consumption of sugary products diminish. This way contribute tackling the deseases causing by sugar such as obesity. Moreover, make the price of sugary products higher encourage young people and children to consume less of these products, this will lead to reduce the amount of this type of products in the markets more, so the popularity of these products will diminish more by the time.

On the other hand, many individuals do not argue with this attitude. One major arguement of this side is that there is several strategies to tackle sugar illnesses, a clear example of that is practicing sport. New research suggest that practicing sport have significant benefits on human health, and people who eat much sugar and practicing a sport are more healthier than others who do not consume lot of sugar but they do not practicing any sports.

In my opinion, I believe that we should reduce consumption of sugar and must be aware about the problems caused by this products. However, even with the issues, we still need to consume sugar in our life, and make sugary products more expensive will creat new problems in other aspects such as economics more than solutions in our health.

To sump up, rise the cost of sugary products is not the best strategy to combate the problems that come from sugar. We can apply other measures such as practicing sport.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5

The response addresses the prompt by discussing both sides of the issue—whether to increase the price of sugary products to curb consumption—and presents a clear personal position in the conclusion. The ideas are relevant, noting arguments about health benefits and economic consequences, as well as alternative solutions like exercising. However, the development of these ideas remains somewhat general and lacks extended elaboration or concrete real-world examples. For instance, the mention of 'practicing sport' is introduced without specific context or evidence to fully substantiate the claim. As a result, the task response falls into the Band 6 category, where all parts of the task are addressed, but some ideas are slightly under-developed and generalised.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

The essay displays a coherent overall arrangement with a logical progression from the introduction to body paragraphs and the conclusion. Paragraphing is used adequately to separate distinct viewpoints, such as supporters' views in the second paragraph and opponents' views in the third. However, cohesion is sometimes faulty or mechanical. Phrases like 'First', 'Moreover', and 'On the other hand' are employed to link ideas, but some transitions feel abrupt, and referencing is occasionally unclear, as seen in vague pronoun usage like 'this type of products' or 'issues'. Furthermore, cohesive devices are sometimes over-used or repetitive, leading to a mechanical flow rather than a seamless progression, aligning the text with the Band 6 descriptors.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

The student uses an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, successfully attempting less common items and topic-related terminology such as 'consumption', 'obesity', and 'popularity'. However, there are noticeable lexical inaccuracies and awkward word choices throughout the text, including 'occures' (occurs), 'deseases' (diseases), 'arguement' (argument), 'combate' (combat), and 'rise the cost' (raise the cost). Collocations are also occasionally unnatural, such as 'people who eat much sugar and practicing a sport are more healthier'. While these errors do not severely impede communication, they demonstrate limitations in precision and word formation that prevent the response from reaching a higher band, making Band 5.5 a fair representation.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The essay contains a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, demonstrating an attempt at varied syntactic structures such as conditional and concessive clauses ('even with the issues, we still need...'). However, frequent grammatical errors are present throughout the text. There are issues with subject-verb agreement ('New research suggest', 'make sugary products... will creat'), incorrect verb forms ('are more healthier', 'do not practicing'), and prepositional errors ('in our life', 'in our health'). Punctuation and sentence boundary issues also occur, such as comma splices. Although the meaning remains generally understandable, the frequency of errors places this performance within the Band 5 range, where attempts at complex sentences are frequently faulty and cause some difficulty for the reader.

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