Band 6.0 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.0 · Barron's Writing · 2026-09-30

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 6.0)

It is certainly true that nowadays a large group of society depends on restaurants and ready to eat meals more as compare to home cooked meals.This essay will discuss both pros and cons of this trend in the following paragraphs respectively.

Firstly, pre-cooked meals saves time and available more frequently. In this fast paced era, people are mostly occupied between their work and household responsibilties. They often don't get time to go for groceries, do meal prep or spend hours in kitchen to cook. Therefore, packaged or frozen food comes at first place. For example, with the help of uber, a home delivery application of food from restaurants, people can enjoy their favourite meals without doing anything. Secondly, the taste of such meals are mouth watering. This is because those food items are usually prepared by top chiefs.

On the other hand, fast food can be unhealty. Since it is prepared advance and we are mostly unaware of indgredients used in cooking. There can be a possiblity of using chemicals or preservatives to enhance the taste. Which can further lead to issues like obesity, high blood sugar or high blood pressure. Furthermore, sometimes the nuritional value of such food can be extremly low. Which does fill us for a period of time, but people often start feeling hungry after sometimes. Due to that hunger they either over eat or adpot unhealthy snacks. As a result, they feel low and tired throughout the day, becomes less productive as well.

To conclude, no doubt outside foods are helpfull in saving time and energy, and tastier than home cooked meals at the same, but use of such meals can lead to unhealty lifestyle, which can further reduce people's ability to work efficiently.

AI examiner evaluation

CriterionBand
Task Achievement / Task Response6.5
Coherence and Cohesion6.5
Lexical Resource5.5
Grammatical Range and Accuracy5.5
Overall6.0

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.5

The response addresses all parts of the task by discussing both the advantages and disadvantages of relying on restaurants and convenience food. Your position is clear throughout the essay, introducing the pros and cons in the introduction and revisiting them in the conclusion. Your ideas are relevant, such as time-saving benefits and potential health risks like obesity and high blood pressure. However, some ideas remain slightly under-developed; for example, the point about food taste could be expanded further with more specific examples rather than a brief mention of top chefs. To reach a higher band, ensure that every main idea is fully extended with deeper explanations and concrete examples.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.5

The essay demonstrates a clear logical organisation and progression throughout. You have used appropriate paragraphing, dividing the introduction, advantages, disadvantages, and conclusion into distinct sections. Cohesive devices such as 'Firstly', 'Secondly', 'On the other hand', and 'To conclude' are used to guide the reader through your arguments, though at times referencing and transitions could be smoother. For instance, sentences like 'Which can further lead to issues...' fragment the cohesion by starting with a relative pronoun rather than connecting to the main clause. To improve further, ensure that cohesive devices are integrated naturally without mechanical transitions.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

You demonstrate an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, successfully attempting less common items such as 'fast paced era', 'household responsibilities', and 'nutritional value'. However, there are noticeable spelling and word choice errors throughout the text, such as 'saves' instead of 'save', 'chiefs' instead of 'chefs', 'unhealty' instead of 'unhealthy', 'advance' instead of 'in advanced', 'indgredients' instead of 'ingredients', 'possiblity', 'nuritional', 'extremly', 'adpot', and 'helpfull'. These inaccuracies slightly impede communication and prevent the response from achieving a higher band. To improve your lexical score, focus on accurate spelling and precise word choices when using less common vocabulary.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.5

The response exhibits a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, attempting structures like conditional and subordinate clauses. However, there are frequent grammatical errors in punctuation and sentence structure, such as sentence fragments ('Which can further lead to issues like obesity...', 'Which does fill us for a period of time...'), subject-verb agreement issues ('the taste of such meals are'), and missing articles or prepositions. These errors require some effort from the reader to interpret fully. To achieve a higher band, you need to increase the frequency of error-free complex sentences and eliminate basic grammatical slips.

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.