Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Barron's Writing · 2026-10-03

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 this era, people are hectic in their worklife. as a result , more people prefer to eat at restaurents than preparing a meal at home.in this topic, we will discuss about the both pros and cons.in my experience eating food from restaurents overweight the advantages.

first of all, i will discuss about how eating food or having meals from fast food chains can help us save a lot of time. these days most of the young folks are very busy with their schedule and eating meals from outside make their life easy and they can use that cooking time to do other activities such as learning new skills which can improve their lifestyle.secondly, it is easier for those folks who do not know to cook food and having food from outside is blessing for them.

now i will talk about the disdavantages of eating food from outside. two years ago, i worked in tim hortons.i have seen the unhygenic process to make food items. for instance, they use months old forzen buns to serve the customers which sometimes get fungus and can lead to several diseases. a news article of times of india revelead that 20 percent population of canada has a high chances of getting food infections due to having there meals from restaurents.

in my opinion, people should save some time and start preparing meals at home. cooking is also basic survival skill which every person should have.if more people start cooking at home, they can avoid the chances of having chronic diseases.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.0

The response addresses all parts of the task by discussing both the advantages and disadvantages of relying on restaurants and convenience food, fulfilling the basic requirements of the prompt. Your position is generally clear from the beginning and reiterated in the conclusion. However, some ideas are more fully developed than others. For instance, the advantage of saving time is explained reasonably well through examples like using time to learn new skills, but the discussion of disadvantages relies heavily on a single personal anecdote from working at Tim Hortons and a generalized reference to a news article rather than fully exploring broader societal or health implications. To reach a higher level, you need to extend and support your arguments with more depth and balanced elaboration across all main points.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.0

The essay presents a coherent overall arrangement with a clear introduction, body paragraphs addressing pros and cons separately, and a distinct concluding paragraph. However, the cohesion between sentences and paragraphs sometimes feels mechanical or basic. You rely on repetitive transition phrases like 'first of all', 'secondly', and 'now i will talk about' to structure your writing. Furthermore, referencing is occasionally imprecise, and the lack of proper capitalization at the beginning of sentences and after full stops disrupts the flow of the text. To improve, you should employ a wider and more natural variety of cohesive devices and ensure your paragraphing and punctuation guide the reader smoothly through your line of reasoning without mechanical transitions.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

The vocabulary used represents an adequate range for the task, allowing you to communicate your main points about convenience food and restaurants. You make attempts to use less common vocabulary, such as 'survival skill' and 'chronic diseases', but there are noticeable errors in word choice, spelling, and word forms that occasionally distract the reader. For example, 'restaurents' is misspelled, 'overweight' is used instead of 'outweigh', 'forzen' contains a spelling error, and 'unhygenic' is also misspelled. Additionally, phrases like 'having there meals' misuse 'there' instead of 'their'. To achieve a higher score, you must expand your lexical repertoire, improve precision in word choice, and eliminate frequent spelling errors.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

Your writing displays a limited range of sentence structures, relying mostly on simple sentences and basic compound forms. While you make some attempts at complex sentences, they are often basic or contain punctuation and structural errors, such as missing capital letters at the start of sentences and after periods throughout the entire text. There are frequent errors in grammar, including capitalization, articles, and prepositions, such as 'people are hectic in their worklife' and 'do not know to cook food'. These errors require some effort for the reader to interpret, though they do not completely impede communication. To move higher, you need to demonstrate a greater variety of complex structures with improved accuracy in punctuation, capitalization, and minor grammatical patterns.

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.