Band 6.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.5 · Cambridge IELTS 16 · 2026-10-31

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 6.5)

Although problems of consuming too much sugar is endless, food and beverages that have large amount of sugar is getting more popular. In my opinion, increasing the price of sugary products could be a beneficial way to stop people from indulging in unhealthy options and inspire them to look for healthy alternatives but creating social awareness is more necessary.

Most of the time, products that contain high level of sugar are relatively cheap. Such as soft drinks, chocolates or cakes. As a result, when children reach for them, parents do not give extra attention to it. Even adults buy them without thinking too much. But if they were costly, parents and adults would think twice before buying them. People often try to spend within a budget. So, when buying those products will make a considerable difference, everyone will naturally gravitate towards healthier alternatives. For example, if chocolates were very costly, parents would instead buy children more fruits. This will lead to two benefits. First being, people will buy less sugary products and they will find other items that could add health value.

Nevertheless, cost alone cannot influence people's choice. There are a lot of people who indulge themselves in the luxury, as they can afford it. In those cases, even if the price is high, it would not matter to them. For this reason social awareness should be the main priority. The main goal is not to make products out of reach, but to educate people so that they can make a conscious choice. For instance, a mother, who knows that sugar is bad for her children would buy them less, than a person who does not know the harms that sugar can do.

To sum it up, raising price could make people have second thoughts before buying the products and this could lead to people consuming less sugar. But it would not impact the people who can afford them. To solve the problem from its core, creating awareness about the impact of sugar is a more effective approach.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 7.0

Your position is clear throughout: you support higher prices as a useful measure, while arguing that public awareness is more important. You address both sides of this view and give relevant examples, such as parents choosing fruit instead of expensive chocolate and an informed mother limiting her children’s sugar intake. These examples help extend your reasoning, and the conclusion returns to your central argument. The discussion is generally well supported, though some claims are broad—for example, that “everyone will naturally gravitate towards healthier alternatives”—and the benefits of awareness could be explained in more detail. To strengthen the response further, qualify generalisations and develop more fully how education might change purchasing habits.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 7.0

The response has a clear overall progression: the introduction presents your qualified position, the first body paragraph explains how higher prices might affect purchases, the next contrasts this with the limits of price, and the conclusion summarises your view. Paragraphing is appropriate, and signposts such as “Nevertheless,” “For this reason,” and “To sum it up” make the argument easy to follow. Some linking is a little mechanical, particularly the repeated use of “So” and “For example,” and the sequence “This will lead to two benefits. First being” is not fully developed because the second benefit is not clearly stated. Use a wider range of transitions and make each paragraph’s internal steps explicit to create smoother progression.

Lexical Resource: Band 6.5

You use an adequate range of vocabulary for the topic, including “indulging in unhealthy options,” “social awareness,” “conscious choice,” and “gravitate towards healthier alternatives.” These phrases show some flexibility and help communicate your argument clearly. There are also several imprecise or unnatural choices that keep the vocabulary from being consistently precise: “problems … is endless,” “large amount of sugar,” and “add health value” do not express the intended ideas naturally. “Luxury” is also not quite the right term for people who can afford costly sugary products. Aim for more accurate collocations and word forms, and check whether a phrase sounds natural in context. This would make your vocabulary more fluent and precise.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 6.0

You use a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, including conditional structures such as “if they were costly” and a relative clause in “a mother, who knows that sugar is bad for her children.” Meaning remains clear, but some grammatical errors occur across the response. For example, “problems … is endless” has a subject–verb agreement error, while “food and beverages that have large amount … is getting” contains agreement and article problems. “Such as soft drinks, chocolates or cakes” is a sentence fragment, and “First being” is an incomplete construction. There are also errors in “when buying those products will make” and “would buy them less, than.” Review agreement, articles, complete sentence structure, and punctuation around clauses; these corrections would improve accuracy while preserving your range.

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

Browse more IELTS Writing model answers or get your own writing scored by the same AI examiner.