Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Barron's Writing · 2026-09-14

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

In many parts of the world, people rely on private cars for transportation.

In what ways does reliance on private cars affect the way we live?

Do the effects tend to be positive or negative?

Give reasons for your answer, and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Student answer (Band 5.5)

In many countries, people drive their own cars for the comute. Depending on the personal cars is afffecting people's lives in both positive and negative way. Personal car gives convinience and saves times, but it is also a big finacial burden and a contribution to the traffic.

On the one hand, people have become more focused on their careers and goals because of the personal cars. Their cars saves them time to spare on their daily tasks like studying, gym , and meditation. For example, a person works 10 hours a days commute by bus daily, would not have enough time to do any othe activity.

First, everyone wants to get a car despise whatever it cost. Personal car becomes a financial burden for most of the people, they pay most part of their income to the car payments.Second, air pollution is mainly caused by car's emmision. Furthermore, traffic is becoming the biggest issue nowdays. People get stuck in the long lines of cars for hours. It is mainly because only few people are willing to take a public bus or train.

In conclusion, having a private car have its own benifits like saving time for other productive activities but it is also making everyone's life miserable by jamming the roads,air pollution, and by keeping huge part of individuals' income.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 5.0

The response addresses all parts of the task by discussing both the ways private cars affect our lives and whether these effects are positive or negative. However, the development of ideas remains somewhat limited and superficial, as seen in the brief examples provided, such as 'a person works 10 hours a days commute by bus daily'. More importantly, the response fails to meet the minimum length requirement, containing only 220 words instead of the required 250 words. This under-length shortfall directly impacts the fullness of task completion and places the essay in the Band 5 range for Task Achievement, where ideas are somewhat under-developed and the task is only partially addressed due to length constraints.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 6.0

The essay displays a logical overall arrangement with a clear introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Paragraphing is used sufficiently to separate distinct ideas, such as positive aspects in the second paragraph and negative aspects in the third. However, cohesion is sometimes mechanical and faulty. For instance, the transition 'First, everyone wants to get a car despise whatever it cost' lacks smooth integration with the preceding paragraph, and referencing is occasionally unclear. Cohesive devices are used, but they are sometimes repetitive or imprecise, such as the abrupt introduction of new negative points without adequate linking. These features align the response closely with Band 6, where cohesion is sometimes faulty and referencing is not always completely clear.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.0

The student uses an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, successfully communicating everyday concepts related to transportation, such as 'air pollution', 'financial burden', and 'productive activities'. However, there are numerous noticeable spelling and word choice errors throughout the text, including 'comute' instead of commute, 'afffecting' instead of affecting, 'convinience' instead of convenience, 'finacial' instead of financial, 'despise' instead of despite, 'emmision' instead of emission, 'nowdays' instead of nowadays, and 'benifits' instead of benefits. While communication is not severely impeded, these frequent lexical and spelling inaccuracies restrict the score to Band 5, as the vocabulary range is limited and errors cause some distraction for the reader.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.0

The essay demonstrates a mix of simple and some complex sentence forms, such as 'Personal car gives convinience and saves times, but it is also a big finacial burden and a contribution to the traffic.' However, grammatical accuracy is weak, featuring frequent errors such as subject-verb agreement issues ('having a private car have', 'Car's emmision'), missing articles ('a days commute', 'by bus'), and incorrect prepositions. For example, 'Depending on the personal cars is afffecting' misuses the phrasal verb structure. Despite these errors, the meaning remains mostly clear to the reader. This mix of structures coupled with frequent errors places the writing firmly at Band 5.

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