Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer
Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 19 · 2026-09-13
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)
Many individuals argue that having rivalry at work boosts progress while many believe that working together and helping each other is the way to go. I firmly agree that competition at work is necessary as each individual would work on their skills and get efficient in every task they are given.
Work life balance for each individual is necessary, if one employee keeps helping others he might loose time to finish his work on time and may have to work over time. Similarly, in this way helping other may get them promoted and the one who really did the job may not even get recognized which is is not right. Burden of work that an individual already has and if he starts working and helping others his mental health may also get worsen every day.
On the other hand, if there is competition at work and people learn to say no to others every individual would work and improve themselves and get better on their own in their job. Meanwhile, Learning on your own and being able to point and improve where you lack is the best possible way as you never forget by this method. Taking others help again and again one would never be able to polish their own skills.
In conclusion, I agree that team work is essential but overworking one individual while others take help from him everyday puts mental pressure and health of a person would be at risk so competition in this regard is the best way to improve the efficiency of work place.
AI examiner evaluation
| Criterion | Band |
|---|---|
| Task Achievement / Task Response | 5.5 |
| Coherence and Cohesion | 5.5 |
| Lexical Resource | 5.5 |
| Grammatical Range and Accuracy | 5.5 |
| Overall | 5.5 |
Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 5.5
The response addresses the prompt by discussing both views on competition and cooperation, and the writer clearly takes a position supporting workplace competition. However, the development is somewhat narrow. Rather than exploring both school and daily life as mentioned in the prompt, the essay focuses almost exclusively on workplace dynamics and the specific issue of colleagues taking advantage of others who help them. While this forms a coherent argument, it leads to some over-generalisation regarding teamwork. Ideas are presented and supported with reasoning, but the scope could be broader to fully cover all contexts mentioned in the prompt. This places the response comfortably in Band 6.
Coherence and Cohesion — Band 5.5
The essay displays a coherent overall arrangement with a clear stance established in the introduction and maintained throughout. Paragraphing is used to separate distinct points, moving from the problems of excessive helping in the second paragraph to the benefits of independent work in the third. However, cohesive devices are sometimes mechanical or repetitive, as seen with transitions like 'Similarly' and 'Meanwhile'. Referencing is also occasionally unclear, such as the ambiguous pronoun use in 'helping other may get them promoted'. Progression is present, but overall cohesion needs more flexibility and smoother linking to reach a higher band.
Lexical Resource — Band 5.5
The student uses an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, successfully incorporating terms like 'efficiency', 'work life balance', 'mental health', and 'polish their own skills'. However, there are noticeable word choice and spelling inaccuracies that detract from precision, such as 'loose' instead of 'lose', 'helping other' instead of 'helping others', and 'mental health and health of a person would be at risk'. Less common lexical items are attempted but occasionally lack natural collocation, resulting in a performance that meets the criteria for Band 6.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.5
The writer attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, such as conditional clauses ('if one employee keeps helping others he might loose time') and relative clauses. However, there are frequent grammatical errors and punctuation issues, including run-on sentences, missing commas, and subject-verb agreement slips ('mental health may also get worsen', 'taking others help again and again one would never'). While these errors do not severely impede overall communication, they occur regularly enough to prevent the essay from achieving a Band 7.
See this exact question answered at other band scores — the same prompt compared across bands.
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