Band 6.0 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.0 · Barron's Writing · 2026-10-01

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)

Over the past few years, the dependency of people on restaurants and convenience food such as frozen items and packaged meals has increased. Nowadays, people do not prefer cooking at home due to a number of reasons including busy scheduled. Where ready-made food items offer benefits it terms of convenience, the nutritional benefits of home-cooked meals cannot be disregarded.

Having the option of ready-made food or frozen food items offers substantial advantages. This is an undeniable fact that life has become quite busy now. People have to work long hours to complete important projects and meet deadlines. Additionally, due to rising inflation, many people are involved in side businesses or part-time jobs to meet their expenses. After a long hectic day, individuals find it quite exhausting to cook meals at home. Instead of cooking, ordering food online, or eating frozen food items is more feasible option for these people. Traditionally, the majority of husbands used to work and wives used to stay at home, cook meals and take care of homes. However, now a significant number of women are also part of work force. With this lifestyle change, take away food or packaged meals have become norm. Even if someone is cooking at home, to save time, many packaged products are used such as sauces, fried onions or ginger-garlic paste. Additionally, people sometimes like to have dinner at restaurants after a hectic day, but ingrediants that these restaurants use are also pacakged most of the time.

On the other hand, the negative effects of having packaging and frozen food items on health cannot be ignored. In the recent years, the number of people suffering from chronic diseases such as cancer, tumors, and cystes have increased.To increase shelf lives of frozen and pacakged food items, a number of chemials and additives are added, which cause significant damage to stomach, kidneys and many other vital organs. Experts argue that using plastic to store and pack these food items result in leaching of these chemicals into our bodies. Eventually, these microplastic enter into blood stream and cause sever health issues.

In conclusion, the advantages and comfort that restaurants and convenience food has provided are significant, but their harmfull effects on human body cannot be ignored.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.0

You address 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 response. However, some ideas are more fully developed than others. For instance, the advantages section is well-supported with relevant points about modern lifestyles, working hours, and shifting social roles within families. On the other hand, the disadvantages section, while mentioning health issues and chemicals, tends to generalize without fully extending or substantiating the arguments about specific diseases. To reach a higher level, you need to ensure that every main idea is equally well-developed with deeper explanations and concrete examples.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.0

Your essay has a coherent overall arrangement with a clear introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. There is a logical progression of ideas from discussing why people rely on convenience food to the health consequences of doing so. However, cohesion is sometimes mechanical or faulty. For example, transition phrases like 'Additionally' and 'On the other hand' are used, but referencing is occasionally unclear, such as in the sentence 'Where ready-made food items offer benefits it terms of convenience...' where the transition at the beginning of the sentence lacks smoothness. Paragraphing is used sufficiently, but to improve further, you should make cohesive devices flow more naturally without relying on repetitive transitional formulas.

Lexical Resource: Band 6.0

You demonstrate an adequate range of vocabulary for the task and successfully attempt less-common items such as 'substantive advantages', 'hectic day', and 'chronic diseases'. However, there are some word-choice and spelling errors that show minor inaccuracy, such as 'busy scheduled' instead of 'busy schedule', 'it terms of' instead of 'in terms of', 'ingrediants' instead of 'ingredients', 'pacakged' instead of 'packaged', 'chemials' instead of 'chemicals', 'cystes' instead of 'cysts', and 'harmfull' instead of 'harmful'. These errors do not impede communication, but they prevent you from achieving a higher band. To improve, pay closer attention to word forms and spelling.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 6.0

You use a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, demonstrating control over structures such as conditional and subordinate clauses (e.g., 'Even if someone is cooking at home, to save time, many packaged products are used...'). There are some errors in grammar and punctuation, but they rarely impede communication. Examples include article and pluralization issues, such as 'have become norm' missing the article 'a', 'microplastic enter' instead of 'microplastics enter', and 'result in leaching' where subject-verb agreement or phrasing could be polished. To move to the next band, you should aim to produce a higher proportion of error-free complex sentences and refine your control over articles and plural forms.

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