Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 19 · 2026-10-03

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)

Diffrent people have different mind sets and capacity. Many people belives that competition is good while other people argue on it and says we should cooperate rather than competing with others.

Firstly, lets talk about the people who think competition is good. Competating with others make work faster. Lets take an example, in a race who runs fast eventually become the winner and get the prize and medal. This concept implyes in our day to day life also. Those people who complete the task or do better they will be consider as a winner and sucessfull. It also helps to enhance the thinking capacity of people. In school childrens trys to do competition with each other for the first place and they have to think in a smart way compare to others to achive the first place. It helps to focus them on their study. Same goes to other people also like in office every employe want to make boss or manager happy. So they are trying to do or trying to show a better result compare to others.

Secondly, Lets talk about the people who think complety opposite. Their point of view is also very nice. Competition make more enemy insted of friends. It makes people toxic. Lets take an example from my life when i was at grade 6 in my class there was 2 best friends. During a school fotball team selection they had to compet for a single striker position. So, from that day their friendship was over and they started to do back talk of each other with others. these shows us how toxic competition can be. People might kill their own friends, sibllings or mentor for sucess.

Overall, I have discussed both opinion and my personal favourite is competition but in a healthy way. We can do it in a healthy way or in a good way without making a more enemys.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5

The response addresses the prompt by discussing both views on competition versus cooperation and provides a personal opinion in the conclusion. However, the development of ideas is limited and at times under-developed. For instance, the paragraph supporting competition jumps between general assertions, a running race example, children at school, and office employees without fully extending any single concept. The position is stated, but the arguments rely on simple explanations rather than deep elaboration, leading to a partial exploration of the topic that meets the requirements for this band.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

There is some basic organisation with a clear introduction, two body paragraphs representing opposing views, and a conclusion. However, there is a lack of clear overall progression between the ideas, making the transition within paragraphs feel abrupt. Cohesive devices are used, but they are often basic, repetitive, or slightly inaccurate, such as starting paragraphs with 'Firstly, lets talk about' and 'Secondly, Lets talk about'. Paragraphing is present to separate the main themes, but referencing and logical links between sentences occasionally feel mechanical or disjointed.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

The vocabulary used is limited in range and minimally adequate for the task. The writer attempts some less common terms and idiomatic concepts, such as 'toxic competition', 'back talk', and 'mind sets', but these are accompanied by noticeable spelling errors ('Diffrent', 'belives', 'Competating', 'implyes', 'sucessfull', 'childrens', 'employe', 'complety', 'insted', 'fotball', 'compet', 'sibllings', 'enemys') and word choice inaccuracies. These lexical errors and awkward collocations occur throughout the essay, sometimes causing minor hesitation for the reader, though the general meaning remains understandable.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The writing shows a limited range of sentence structures, relying mostly on simple sentences with occasional attempts at complex or compound forms that often contain faults. There are frequent grammatical errors, including issues with subject-verb agreement (e.g., 'there was 2 best friends'), missing articles, incorrect pluralisations ('a lot of enemys'), and punctuation mistakes. These frequent errors in basic and attempted complex structures require some effort from the reader to untangle, characteristic of this level of control.

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