Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer
Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Barron's Writing · 2026-09-12
IELTS Writing Task 2 question
A growing number of people rely on restaurants and convenience food (frozen food and packaged meals) rather than home-cooked food to supply most of their meals.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of eating this way?
Give reasons for your answer, and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.
Student answer (Band 5.5)
With the arrival of modern cultures, there has been a radical shift in the people do things. In this day and age, a large section of soicety like to eat fast food such as burger, pizza and chips rather than fresh food, which cooked in house. Although the advantages of this trend are look more at first glance, the disadvantages are certainly more considerable.
On the one hand, there are multiple benefits if people usually eat restaurants and frozen food.
The first and foremost merit is that yunk foods cook easily and timely. In other words, nowadays, everyone busy in their life they do not have enough time to make some food in the house.Therefore, individuals mostly prefer the frozen food because it is already half cooked and it is ready with in minute. Another major benefit is that restaurants food are very tasty and good looking. Most of the people like to eat that food, which is good in taste rather than healthy food.
For example, audlts and children are love to eat yunk food because it is tasty and comes with ample of sauce as compare to home-cooked food.
On the other hand, this trend never overlooked its major shortcomings. There are several drawbacks if people eat fast food on daily basis. The main significant demerit is that health related issue along with put impact on mental health. In terms of detail, if significant proportion of people take packed food in daily routein then they easy get ample of diseases. Moreover, when people eat fast food then they not only face health issue, but also put major impact on their mental heatlh. Because fast food lack of nutrients, which is ver necessary for human body.
In conclusion, after analiyze both points i
AI examiner evaluation
| Criterion | Band |
|---|---|
| Task Achievement / Task Response | 6.0 |
| Coherence and Cohesion | 5.5 |
| Lexical Resource | 5.0 |
| Grammatical Range and Accuracy | 5.0 |
| Overall | 5.5 |
Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 6.0
The response addresses the prompt by discussing both the advantages and disadvantages of eating restaurant and convenience food over home-cooked meals. The position is clear throughout the essay. However, the development of ideas tends to be somewhat superficial and repetitive. For instance, the advantages section focuses heavily on time-saving and taste, stating that 'yunk foods cook easily and timely' and that restaurants food are very tasty, but these points are not fully extended or supported with deeper analysis. Similarly, the disadvantages section mentions health and mental health issues without fully explaining the underlying reasons. While all parts of the task are addressed, the depth of idea development places this performance firmly at Band 6.
Coherence and Cohesion — Band 5.5
The essay is generally coherent with an overall logical arrangement, dividing ideas into clear paragraphs for introduction, advantages, disadvantages, and an incomplete conclusion. Paragraphing is used sufficiently. However, cohesive devices are sometimes mechanical or faulty, such as 'In terms of detail, if significant proportion...' and the repetitive use of transition phrases like 'On the one hand' and 'On the other hand'. Referencing is also occasionally unclear, as seen in the sentence 'this trend never overlooked its major shortcomings', where the subject-verb relationship is confused. Furthermore, the conclusion is abruptly cut off, which disrupts the logical progression of the piece.
Lexical Resource — Band 5.0
The lexical resource demonstrates an adequate range for the task, with attempts to use less common vocabulary such as 'radical shift', 'convenience food', and 'shortcomings'. However, there are numerous spelling and word-choice errors that detract from the quality, including 'soicety' instead of society, 'yunk' instead of junk, 'audlts' instead of adults, and 'routein' instead of routine. Collocations are also frequently unnatural, such as 'put impact on mental health' and 'easy get ample of diseases'. While communication is maintained despite these errors, the frequent lexical inaccuracies prevent the response from achieving a higher band.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.0
The writer attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, such as 'Although the advantages of this trend are look more at first glance...' and 'In other words, nowadays, everyone busy in their life they do not have enough time...'. However, grammatical accuracy is weak, featuring frequent errors such as missing verbs ('which cooked in house', 'fast food lack of nutrients'), incorrect verb forms ('are look', 'are love'), and run-on structures. These errors require some effort from the reader to interpret, although they do not completely impede overall communication. The presence of these persistent structural and punctuation errors aligns with the Band 5 descriptor.
See this exact question answered at other band scores — the same prompt compared across bands.
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