Band 6.0 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.0 · Cambridge IELTS 19 · 2026-10-22

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 6.0)

Some people believe that having a competitive environment at work, school and in everyday life is a positive aspect. However, others disagree with this statement and argue that cooperation should be the main focus. I firmly support the latter opinion because it fosters social harmony and a positive environment. However, I also think that a certain amount of competition is healthy for society.

Competition in a community allows individuals who work hard and have talent, to excel in their fields. Rewarding people who strive for greatness, encourages others to do the same. Thus, creating an environment where even lazy people feel motivated to work hard. For example, a child who scores full marks in a test, gets rewarded and praised by their intructors and parents. They will be more likely to maintain their academic excellence throughout their life. This sets an example and provides incentive for other students to imitate this behaviour, resulting in a positive form of competition. However, this also runs the risk for others to sabotage their peers in order to succeed.

Working together and compensating for what others lack, is an ideal form of cooperation. It allows people to maintain a positive working space where no one is a liability and provides room for learning. For example, a new employee might feel presured to not to participate in group discussions for fear of being ridiculed. They might not know enough about the work environment or have adequate knowledge of the topic. By having a positive attitude and understanding eachother's weaknesses, employees can teach new hires essential skills. Even cooperating among different departments with the same attitude would yield better results and improve worker efficiency.

Nevertheless, cooperation should be the priority whether at work, school or daily life. Competition to a certain extent is a good way to bring improvement in people's lives but it poses risks and must be managed.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.0

You address both perspectives and make your own position clear: cooperation should be prioritised, although some competition is beneficial. The examples about a high-achieving student and a new employee help illustrate the two views, and the conclusion restates your balanced position. However, the discussion is not equally developed. The benefits of cooperation are explained through workplace learning and efficiency, while its wider value in school and daily life is asserted rather than supported. The competition paragraph also moves quickly from rewards to motivation and then to sabotage, without explaining when that risk becomes significant. Develop these points with clearer reasoning and examples, and connect them more directly to your overall preference for cooperation, to make the response more fully developed.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.5

The response has a clear overall structure: an introduction, separate paragraphs for competition and cooperation, and a concluding position. The progression from the two views to your own preference is easy to follow, and linking expressions such as “For example,” “However,” and “Nevertheless” guide the reader. This already gives the essay a coherent arrangement. At times, though, connections feel mechanical or the relationship between ideas is not fully explicit. For instance, “Thus, creating an environment…” is a sentence fragment rather than a smooth continuation, and the shift from praising competition to the risk of sabotage could be explained more clearly. The conclusion is also brief. Use more varied links between cause and result, and make each paragraph’s central point and supporting explanation connect more tightly.

Lexical Resource: Band 6.0

You use an adequate range of vocabulary for the topic, including “social harmony,” “excel,” “incentive,” “liability,” and “worker efficiency.” These choices help communicate ideas about motivation and cooperation, and the meaning remains clear. There are also some inaccurate or unnatural choices that limit precision: “compensating for what others lack” is not the most natural way to describe colleagues supporting one another, while “positive working space” would be better expressed as a workplace environment. Spelling errors such as “intructors,” “presured,” and “eachother's” also affect accuracy. Aim for more natural collocations and check spelling carefully; precise phrases such as “complementing one another’s strengths” would make your argument sound more fluent and controlled.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 6.0

You use a mix of simple and complex structures, including conditional phrasing (“A new employee might feel…”) and clauses explaining results. Most sentences communicate their meaning, but some grammatical and punctuation errors remain. In “Rewarding people who strive for greatness, encourages others,” the comma incorrectly separates the subject from its verb. “Thus, creating an environment…” is a fragment and should be joined to the preceding sentence. The phrase “might feel presured to not to participate” contains an incorrect infinitive pattern; write “might feel pressured not to participate.” There are also missing spaces in “eachother's” and some awkward sentence construction. Review sentence boundaries, comma use, and infinitive patterns while retaining your attempts at complex sentences.

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