Band 4.0 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 4.0 · Cambridge IELTS 19 · 2026-09-17

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 4.0)

Some people belive that competition in the workplace, schools and daily life is beneficial, whilw other think that people shoud cooperate with each other instead.

overall, competition can motivate people to work harder and improve their performance while cooperation can help people solve problems and achive coomon goals. I belive that cooperate. Cooperate helps people work togerther. people can share ideas and solve problems together. While Competition motivate people to work harder. It can improve peoples performance and skills.

Cooperate helps people work togerther.When people cooperate they can share their ideas skills and responsibilities with each other. For example students can work together on a school project and divide the work among themselve. Their cooperate helps people work togerther. It can people performance and skills.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 4.0

The response is significantly under-length, containing only 125 words compared to the minimum requirement of 250 words. This severely limits the candidate's ability to fully address all parts of the task. While the essay attempts to discuss both views regarding competition and cooperation and briefly states an opinion ('I belive that cooperate'), the ideas remain largely undeveloped, repetitive, and fragmentary. Sentences such as 'While Competition motivate people to work harder' show an attempt to address one side of the prompt, but the lack of elaboration and severe truncation prevents the response from reaching higher than a Band 4.0 under Task Achievement guidelines.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 4.0

The overall organisation of the essay is extremely fragmented and basic, heavily impacting coherence and cohesion. The response consists of a series of repetitive, disconnected sentences rather than a cohesive text. Paragraphing is poorly handled, with ideas breaking down into short, repetitive stubs like 'Cooperate helps people work togerther.' Cohesive devices are largely absent or misused, and referencing is unclear or circular. Although a rudimentary overall stance can be gleaned, the lack of logical progression, frequent self-repetition, and absence of functional linking devices place this text firmly at a Band 4.0 for this criterion.

Lexical Resource — Band 4.0

The vocabulary used throughout the essay is very basic, highly repetitive, and limited in range. Words such as 'competition', 'cooperate', 'people', 'work', and 'problems' are repeated constantly without synonyms or paraphrasing. There are also numerous spelling errors, including 'belive' instead of 'believe', 'whilw' instead of 'while', 'shoud' instead of 'should', 'achive' instead of 'achieve', 'coomon' instead of 'common', 'togerther' instead of 'together', 'motivate' instead of 'motivates', and 'demselfe' instead of themselves. Because the lexical vocabulary is minimal and constrained by frequent errors that occasionally strain comprehension, it warrants a Band 4.0.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 4.0

Grammatically, the text demonstrates a very limited range of structures. Most sentences are simple, and attempts at complex structures fail or result in broken phrasing, such as dangling clauses ('While Competition motivate people to work harder. It can improve peoples performance'). There are persistent grammatical errors throughout the response, including subject-verb agreement issues ('Competition motivate' instead of 'competition motivates'), missing apostrophes ('peoples performance'), and improper word forms ('I belive that cooperate' instead of 'cooperation'). While the meaning is occasionally retrievable, the frequency of basic grammatical errors places the writing at a Band 4.0 level.

See this exact question answered at other band scores — the same prompt compared across bands.

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