Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 19 · 2026-10-13

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)

Some people argued that competing with others in life is valuable thing while other people think we should cooperate with eachother rather than competing. While i believe that competition is a good thing because it gave us quality of things and prosper our lives.

On the one hand, competition at workplace gives you more opportunity to grow and you make a quality of work. When you compete with colleagues at work it gives you more money and satisfaction. While the childrens who compete with eachother produce more good grades in their studies. For example when i was in my school, i used to do competition with my friend in academics. So by competing with him, i got good grades than him. So competition helps me to get my desired results. Moreover, companies who compete with eachother produces more quality things.

On the other hand, competition sparks more negative things too. Like people becomes enemies of eachother when they could not to compete eachother in many aspects of life like in money, prosperity, bussiness related success. So competition spreads hate and bad environment in the society. For example, some people of my town used to do competition with eachother in their bussiness. when one party could not compete with other they killed the people of leading party which was making too much profit in their bussiness. So we have learnt from them that competition sparks many negative thing too.

In my opinion, competition is a great thing but when it is done in a balanced. So we should compete with eachother in honesty, disciplne and other good kind of things that lead our lives towards success.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.0

You address both sides of the question and state a clear preference for competition, while acknowledging that it can have harmful effects. The workplace, school, and business examples are relevant, and the school anecdote helps explain how competition can motivate achievement. However, cooperation is discussed mainly as the opposing view in the introduction; the body does not explain its benefits or give a concrete example of how cooperation helps people. Some points also need fuller explanation: for instance, the claim that competition gives workers “more money and satisfaction” is asserted rather than supported, and the violent business example is dramatic but not clearly connected to how cooperation could prevent such outcomes. Develop both views more evenly and clarify your balanced position.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.0

The response has a clear overall structure: an introduction, a paragraph supporting competition, a paragraph describing its disadvantages, and a concluding opinion. “On the one hand,” “On the other hand,” and “In my opinion” make the main stages easy to follow. However, progression within paragraphs is sometimes mechanical, with repeated use of “So” and “For example,” and some links between ideas are unclear. The shift from workplace benefits to children’s grades is understandable but abrupt, while the business example needs a clearer explanation of its relevance. References such as “them” in “we have learnt from them” are also not fully clear. Use more varied transitions and make each example’s connection to its main point explicit.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

You use enough topic-related vocabulary to communicate the main ideas, including “competition,” “cooperate,” “colleagues,” “satisfaction,” and “prosperity.” There are also attempts at more specific expressions, such as “leading party” and “desired results.” However, the range is limited and several word choices or collocations are inaccurate or repetitive, which sometimes makes the meaning less natural: “a quality of work,” “produce more good grades,” and “competition sparks more negative things” are examples. Spelling errors such as “eachother,” “bussiness,” and “disciplne” also reduce accuracy. Build a wider set of natural collocations for discussing motivation, collaboration, and social consequences, and check spelling carefully.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

You attempt both simple and more complex sentence forms, including a contrast clause beginning “While I believe…” and a conditional idea in “when it is done in a balanced.” The overall meaning is generally understandable, but errors in verb forms, agreement, articles, and sentence construction occur across the response. For example, “companies … produces” has a subject–verb agreement error, “people becomes enemies” has the same issue, and “it gave us” does not maintain the appropriate tense for a general claim. The opening sentence also joins contrasting ideas awkwardly, and the final sentence is incomplete in its phrasing. Practise accurate present-tense generalisations and complete conditional structures, then proofread for agreement and sentence boundaries.

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