Band 6.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer
Overall Band Score: 6.5 · Barron's Writing · 2026-09-19
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 6.5)
A significant number of individuals depend on restaurants and fast food for their daily meals, instead of cooking their own food at home. Although doing this provides them quick food and saves them time, it can badly effect their financial stability and health with long term usage.
On the one hand, there are several benefits of convenience food. The primary advantage is that it saves a persons' time and effort to make food and also gives them a variety of choices to select from. For example, a working professional with hectic lifestyle might prefer to go to a restaurant for his lunch, and enjoy different cuisines on different occasions. This way he can utilise the time saved from cooking homemade food to spend with their loved ones or to workout, and also to persue a hobbie. Moreover, it gives the person relief from maintaining grocries, and the struggle to choose what to eat.
On the other hand, frequent use of fast food can have adverse affects on health. The restaurants or food manufacturers often use preservatives to enhance the taste of food and to increase their shelf life. The frequent use of this type of food and create issues like, heart deseases, bad colestrole, and other physical challenges.To illustrate this let's take an example of fried food. I consumed fried chicken regularly for two months, when I was working two jobs, and was later diagnosed with fatty liver. It made me realise the worth of home-cooked food. Furthermore, the outside food is always expensive and often has less portions. This forces you to spend more than usual for the same portion of food that you can cook at home with less investment.
In conclusion, relying on restaurants and convenience food could help busy people in short term as it saves them time and effort of cooking, but can cause serious health problems if used extensively.
AI examiner evaluation
| Criterion | Band |
|---|---|
| Task Achievement / Task Response | 7.0 |
| Coherence and Cohesion | 7.0 |
| Lexical Resource | 6.0 |
| Grammatical Range and Accuracy | 6.0 |
| Overall | 6.5 |
Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 7.0
The response addresses all parts of the prompt by discussing both the advantages and disadvantages of eating out and consuming convenience food. A clear position is maintained throughout the essay. The advantages are well-developed, focusing on time-saving aspects, lifestyle flexibility, and relief from household chores. Similarly, the disadvantages are supported with relevant ideas concerning health implications and financial costs. The personal example regarding fatty liver adds genuine support to the argument, although the explanation could be slightly more generalized for a standard IELTS task. Overall, the ideas are extended appropriately, meeting the expectations for a Band 7 response under this criterion.
Coherence and Cohesion — Band 7.0
The essay displays a clear logical organization and progression throughout. It is appropriately divided into four paragraphs: an introduction, a body paragraph for advantages, a body paragraph for disadvantages, and a conclusion. Cohesive devices such as 'On the one hand,' 'On the other hand,' 'For example,' and 'Furthermore' are used to connect ideas effectively, although referencing occasionally slips, such as shifting between plural and singular pronouns ('a working professional... their loved ones'). Paragraphing is used sufficiently and appropriately, ensuring the overall progression of the argument remains clear to the reader, aligning well with the Band 7 descriptors.
Lexical Resource — Band 6.0
The writer demonstrates a sufficient range of vocabulary to allow some flexibility and precision, employing terms such as 'financial stability,' 'hectic lifestyle,' 'adverse affects,' and 'extensively.' However, there are some noticeable word choice and spelling inaccuracies, such as 'badly effect' (affect), 'grocries' (groceries), 'deseases' (diseases), 'colestrole' (cholesterol), and 'hobbie' (hobby). Additionally, the phrase 'has less portions' is slightly unnatural compared to 'smaller portions' or 'fewer portions.' These minor lexical errors and spelling slips keep the vocabulary score firmly within the Band 6 range.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 6.0
The essay incorporates a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, such as concessive clauses ('Although doing this provides them quick food...') and conditional-like or temporal constructions ('when I was working two jobs'). There are several grammatical errors and awkward phrasings present, including 'provides them quick food' (provides them with quick food), 'saves a persons' time' (saves a person's time), and 'the outside food' (outside food). While punctuation and grammar are generally controlled enough to avoid impeding communication, the frequency of minor structural and prepositional errors prevents the writing from reaching a Band 7.
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.