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)

In today's fast paced world, vast number of people rely on ready to eat products or eating out on restaurant. mainly because of lack of time to prepare food at home with fresh vegetables and other ingredients. And this change has more disadvantages than advantages.

The advantages of eating out in restaurant make you more social with your friends and colleagues. Reason being, when one individual get tired from hectic day at work and decide to go out for dinner due to the time and energy requires to prepare food, they always prefer to go with friends and that way people opens about their personal life with others.

Whereas, the disadvantages on being rely on restaurants food and frozen food for long period of time on routine life is risky for health. Firstly frozen or packed food comes with lot of preservatives which make significant impact on health. Moreover, these sort of meals lacking of imporant nutritions. For instance, now a days, sitting in cafe or small restaurant for work meeting and events is increasing very common at workplace, which endup having restaurant's food all day. Moreover, storing frozen food at home for the time needed when it feel to tired from work end up eating in daily life, because of no or very less efforts needed to prepare it.

In conclusion, restaurants and convenience food has numbers of long term negative impact on human body because of the lack of nutritions and side effects of junk food. Therefore, people should adopt cooking meal at home with fresh ingredients.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 6.0

The response addresses the prompt by discussing both the advantages and disadvantages of relying on restaurants and convenience food. A clear position is stated in the introduction, arguing that the disadvantages outweigh the advantages. However, the development of ideas is somewhat limited and repetitive. For instance, the advantage is briefly explained around socialization, while the disadvantages focus heavily on health impacts and preservatives without introducing broader societal or economic aspects. The support provided tends to generalize rather than fully develop specific arguments. Nevertheless, all parts of the prompt are addressed, fulfilling the core requirements of a Band 6 response.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 6.0

The essay displays a logical overall arrangement with a clear introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion. Paragraphing is used appropriately to separate advantages from disadvantages. However, cohesion within and between sentences is frequently faulty or mechanical. For example, the use of transition words like 'Moreover' and 'Therefore' is repetitive, and some sentences lack smooth transitions, such as 'And this change has more disadvantages than advantages,' which begins with a conjunction and is grammatically incomplete. Referencing is occasionally unclear, such as pronoun use referring back to previous clauses. Overall, it achieves a coherent structure, aligning well with the Band 6 descriptors.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.5

The student uses an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, attempting less common phrases such as 'fast paced world,' 'preservatives,' and 'nutritions.' However, there are notable word choice and collocation errors, such as 'eating out on restaurant' instead of 'at restaurants,' 'on being rely' instead of 'relying,' and 'lacking of imporant nutritions' instead of 'lack important nutrients.' Spelling errors are also present, including 'imporant' and 'endup.' While the vocabulary is sufficient to convey meaning, these frequent inaccuracies restrict the score to a Band 5.5.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.0

The writer attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, but control over grammar is inconsistent. There are numerous grammatical errors throughout the text, including subject-verb agreement issues ('meals lacking of') and incorrect prepositions ('impact on health' is acceptable, but 'significant impact' needs an article). Sentences like 'Reason being, when one individual get tired from hectic day at work and decide to go out...' contain multiple errors (e.g., 'get' instead of 'gets', missing articles before 'hectic day'). Punctuation and sentence boundary errors also occur, such as sentence fragments. These errors cause some difficulty for the reader, placing the grammar at a Band 5.0.

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