Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 16 · 2026-09-30

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)

The excessive consumption of sugar is probably very unhealthy for human health, as it causes diabetes, which is very dangerous for the human body. Many manufactured foods and drinks contain very high levels of sugar, and people have become very accustomed to them; they even consume them daily, often many times a day. But they have no idea about it. For example, one of my friends consumes these kinds of products daily, and now he is facing a disease called diabetes. Now he needs to consume a proper diet to maintain his sugar level; if he does not take its proper diet, he has to face many issues due to his disease.

Furthermore, these kinds of products are very unhealthy for our body. So, if you want to eat these products, you have to make sure that the quantity is limited and also take them once a week. Also, sugary products should be made more expensive to encourage people to consume less sugar because if these products are very easy to buy, then everyone will go for them.

Moreover, if these products are costly, then less count of people will buy them, and less quantity of sugar will be consumed by people, which is healthier and beneficial for everyone. For example, if we consume more sugar, we become more addicted to it, as we need it daily, and slowly slowly the addiction increases over time which cause disease

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.0

The response addresses the prompt by discussing the health risks of sugar and whether making sugary products more expensive is an effective solution. However, the position is sometimes repetitive rather than fully explored. The student introduces relevant ideas, such as personal anecdotes and the concept of addiction, but these are limited and lack deeper extension. Furthermore, the response has a word count of 238 words, which fails to meet the minimum requirement of 250 words. This results in a penalty to the Task Achievement score, as the task has not been fully completed in terms of length. To improve, ensure you develop your arguments further with broader societal impacts rather than relying solely on personal examples, and always monitor your word count to stay above the 250-word threshold.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

The essay displays some overall organisation, but the paragraphing and logical progression are weak. The text is divided into three paragraphs, but the second paragraph is excessively long and crams multiple distinct ideas together, including personal examples, dietary advice, and economic arguments about taxation. Cohesive devices are sometimes used, such as 'Furthermore' and 'Moreover', but referencing is occasionally unclear, as seen with phrases like 'these kinds of products' repeated frequently without varied substitution. There is a lack of smooth transitions between the health consequences of sugar and the economic intervention proposed by the prompt, creating a disjointed reading experience. To achieve a higher band, you must organise your ideas into clear, distinct paragraphs with a logical flow from problem to proposed solution.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

The vocabulary used is generally adequate for basic communication, featuring common words related to health and food, such as 'consumption', 'unhealthy', 'disease', and 'addiction'. However, the range is limited and repetitive, with phrases like 'these kinds of products' and 'consume sugar' appearing multiple times. There are also unnatural collocations and awkward phrasing, such as 'less count of people' instead of 'fewer people', and the colloquial expression 'slowly slowly'. The student attempts some less common vocabulary like 'addicted', but lacks the precision required for higher bands. To improve lexical resource, you should incorporate a wider variety of synonyms and more sophisticated academic collocations to discuss public health and economic policies.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.5

The essay demonstrates a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, attempting conditional clauses such as 'if we consume more sugar, we become more addicted'. However, control over grammar and punctuation is inconsistent. There are run-on sentences and comma splices, particularly in the final sentence where multiple clauses are joined improperly, leading to the fragment 'which cause disease' missing a subject verb agreement ('causes'). Other minor errors occur, such as repetitive use of present simple tense where past or modal verbs might be more appropriate. While these errors do not completely impede communication, they occur frequently enough to pull the score down into the mid-band range. Focusing on sentence boundaries and grammatical accuracy will significantly improve this score.

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

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