Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 19 · 2026-08-11

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)

Competiton and Coperation both are important aspect of our modern life. While some people think competition at work, school and in everyday life motivates the people to perform better in every tasks other argue that cooperation has more beneficial.

On the one hand, Competition has several positive aspects. For examples, competition at school encourages the students to perform better study habits and therefore they can get good grades. Also, in work competition helps to motivates the employees to improve productivity and develop their skills. Companies also get benefit from competiton because employees are encourage to find innovative solution and perform effective. Therefore, competition is good at the reasonable level where one can become more ambitious.

On the other hand, Competion has its negative aspects as well, if the competition is intense individual can have bad relationship and more stress. So, cooperation should have greater importance because most real world problems required team collabration. Cooperation helps employee or individual to work in stress free environment which promots helathy relation in everyday life and individual can learn new idea and skill through team work therefore, the work burden is also less.

In my perspective, healthy competition is useful which does not come in expense of others. Howerer, cooperation has greater importance because in real world problems team work is more useful. Although, a healthy competition and cooperation has their own advantages. I prefer the cooperation more because working in helathy team environment encourages individual to perform better as individual is stress free and knowns that the team is behind their support. Although, competition helps to learn or develop the skills and innovates the new ideas faster it only makes bad relationships among collegues.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 5.5

The response addresses all parts of the prompt, discussing both competition and cooperation before providing a clear personal opinion. The ideas are relevant and generally well-supported, such as the mention of productivity in the workplace and the stress-reducing benefits of collaboration. However, the development is somewhat repetitive, particularly in the final paragraph where the arguments for cooperation are restated without adding significant new depth. To reach a higher band, ensure that each supporting point is fully explored with distinct examples rather than echoing previous sentiments. The position is consistent throughout the essay, meeting the requirements for a Band 6.5 or 7.0, but the lack of nuanced development keeps it at a 6.0.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 5.5

The essay is logically organized into four paragraphs, with a clear introduction, two body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Cohesive devices such as 'On the one hand,' 'Also,' and 'In my perspective' are used to guide the reader. However, the use of these devices is sometimes mechanical or slightly inaccurate, such as the transition 'Although, a healthy competition and cooperation has their own advantages' in the final paragraph, which feels disjointed. Additionally, some sentences are slightly awkward, which impacts the flow. The paragraphing is appropriate, but the progression of ideas could be smoother to achieve a higher score.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.5

The vocabulary is adequate for the task, allowing the student to express ideas clearly. There is an attempt to use topic-specific vocabulary like 'innovative solution,' 'productivity,' and 'colleagues.' However, there are several spelling errors ('Competiton,' 'Coperation,' 'helathy,' 'collegues') and some word choice inaccuracies, such as 'perform effective' instead of 'perform effectively' and 'come in expense of' instead of 'come at the expense of.' These errors do not impede communication, but they demonstrate a limited range and lack of precision, which is characteristic of a Band 6.0.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.5

The student uses a mix of simple and complex sentence structures. While the meaning is generally clear, there are frequent grammatical errors, particularly with subject-verb agreement ('competition... motivates,' 'most real world problems required,' 'cooperation has their own advantages') and article usage. Some sentences are also structurally awkward, such as 'competition at school encourages the students to perform better study habits.' While the errors do not prevent the reader from understanding the message, they are frequent enough to prevent the essay from reaching the Band 7 level, where a higher frequency of error-free sentences is expected.

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