Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 19 · 2026-11-10

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

Some people think that competition at work, at school and in daily life is a good thing. Others believe that we should try to cooperate more, rather than competing against each other.

Discuss both these views and give your own opinion.

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

Student answer (Band 5.5)

Several individuals believe that competition at workpalce, at school and in daily life is a positive thing whereas, others think cooperation is more effective than competition. In my opinion, competition along with coopertation help people to succeed in their life.

People who assume competition in our daily lives, workpalces and school provide advantages, have some reasons behind it. Firstly competition encourage people to be innovatitive. When a person feel competion around them, they try to make their work different from others. For exaplme, teacher give same assingment to every students, while the ouctome of each student differ from others. Since there is a competiton among all students, everyone try to think outside of the box to get better markes than others. Another reason is people fell more motivated doing their work. They work hard and make the best use of their potential, because want to do better than others. However, sometimes individuals drag down others, and choose to harm others so that they can be the winner.

On the other hand, individuals consider coopertation as effective rather than competition due to a reason that cooperation leads to easier and effincient outcome. Whenever, everyone help each other and try to do work as a team, the process become easy, comfrtable and result show execllency. For instance, in a football game a team palyers have to play together, with same strategy, thinking and goal, and support each other in every situation to win. However, sometimes people become so depending to each other that they forget to work alone.

According to me, healthy competition with cooperation helps everyone to success. In the football when people just focus on themselves they can't perform better, wherease just as they become dependent to others they can't perform better when situation change. So the player need to feel competition among team to improve their skill, as they should help others to improve and play with same strategy.

In conclusion, while healthy competition help each to grow, cooperation help to achieve overall goal. Just as both gets on the same peach an execellent result is seen.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.0

You address both sides of the discussion and give a clear position: you support combining healthy competition with cooperation. The examples of students completing the same assignment and footballers working as a team are relevant, and the conclusion restates your view. This fits the descriptor because the task is covered, but some points are less fully developed than others. For example, you mention that competition can lead people to harm others, but do not explain how this affects its value or how cooperation might prevent it. Your final football comparison also repeats the central idea rather than adding a developed reason. To strengthen the response, explain the consequences of each view and connect each example more explicitly to your argument. (Eight words copied from the task prompt were not counted.)

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.0

The response has a coherent overall arrangement: an introduction, separate paragraphs for competition and cooperation, your opinion, and a conclusion. Signposting such as “Firstly,” “On the other hand,” and “In conclusion” helps readers follow the main stages. However, some connections are mechanical or unclear. The repeated “However” introduces drawbacks without showing how they relate to the preceding point, and the shift from the football example to your opinion is not fully smooth. In the final paragraph, “Just as both gets on the same peach” makes the intended relationship difficult to follow. Use clearer links between claims and examples, and make pronouns and references explicit so the progression feels more continuous.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

You use a range of relevant vocabulary, including “innovative,” “motivated,” “potential,” “strategy,” and “overall goal,” which allows you to discuss both sides of the topic. There are also attempts at less common expressions, such as “think outside of the box.” However, spelling errors and inaccurate word choices are noticeable and sometimes distract the reader: examples include “workpalce,” “coopertation,” “effincient,” and “execllency.” Some combinations are also unnatural, such as “competition among team” and “same peach.” Aim for accurate spelling and more natural collocations, particularly when expressing your main argument. A careful proofreading pass and learning vocabulary in phrases, rather than as isolated words, would improve precision and fluency.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

You attempt both simple and complex sentence forms, including clauses introduced by “while,” “because,” and “so that.” This gives the response some structural variety, and the main ideas are generally understandable. However, some errors in agreement, verb forms, articles, and sentence construction remain. For example, “competition encourage people” needs subject–verb agreement, while “the process become easy” also requires an appropriate verb form. In “because want to do better,” the clause lacks a subject, and “a team palyers have to play together” has an unclear grammatical structure. Review agreement and complete clause formation, then check articles and punctuation. More accurate control of these patterns would make your complex sentences clearer.

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