Band 5.0 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.0 · Cambridge IELTS 19 · 2026-10-30

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 5.0)

Few people believe that revelry at school or work on daily bases is a good thing. Rest believe that we should try to keep a friendly environment instead of competition. Both of these prospective cater the work or school environment differently. The competitors believe that healthy revelry motivates people to work hard in order to stay in the competition of being the best improving there motivation and productivity. While the believers of healthy environment say that with healthy relation among the peers or colleagues improves the group working efficiency by making the people work as a team.

The competitive environment fuels the thrust of individuals when they see someone doing better then them. It becomes a race and everyone is trying to be the first one to finish. This is an effective method until the environment does not develop hatred or negative intentions. Everyone starts giving there best and even the people who do not make it to the finish line still reach a significant amount of achievement. A good example of this are the sales and trading firms that specifically work on competitive work to achieve high number of profits.

On the other hand the believers of friendly environment believe on team effort and bonding. The want to maximize the bonding between people so they can help each other in producing results that a single person can find hectic. This kind of environment specifically includes schools where children are taught to be friendly relation relation and help each other in finishing assignments, understand study material and work in Projects.

AI examiner evaluation

CriterionBand
Task Achievement / Task Response5.0
Coherence and Cohesion5.5
Lexical Resource5.0
Grammatical Range and Accuracy5.0
Overall5.0

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.0

You discuss both perspectives and give relevant examples: competition is linked to motivation and sales performance, while cooperation is illustrated through pupils helping one another. However, the response only partially fulfils the task because your own opinion is not clearly stated. The opening presents the two views, but does not say which you support, and the essay ends without a conclusion or a judgement comparing their value. Several ideas also remain under-developed: for example, you mention that competition can create “hatred or negative intentions” but do not explain how this affects people or when the risk becomes significant. State your position explicitly and develop each main point with a clearer explanation and example.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

The response has a recognisable structure: an introduction presents both views, followed by a paragraph on competition and one on cooperation. Transitions such as “On the other hand” help signal the change in perspective. However, the overall progression is incomplete because there is no concluding paragraph to bring the discussion together or state your position. Some links between ideas are also awkward or unclear, particularly the opening sentence of the cooperation paragraph, where “The want to maximize the bonding” makes the reference difficult to follow. The first paragraph contains several ideas in quick succession without clearly separating the two sides. Use clearer topic sentences, refer consistently to the groups being discussed, and add a conclusion that follows from the body paragraphs.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.0

You use some relevant vocabulary for the topic, including “competitive environment,” “productivity,” “team effort,” and “colleagues.” These choices show an attempt to discuss workplace and school contexts. However, the range is limited and several inaccurate word choices or collocations make parts of the argument difficult to understand. For instance, “revelry” means noisy celebration rather than competition, and “thrust of individuals” does not express the intended idea of motivation. “Healthy environment” is also too vague when you mean cooperation. Spelling and word-form errors such as “there” for “their” and “then” for “than” further reduce precision. Build a more reliable set of topic-specific expressions and check that each word fits its context.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

You attempt some longer sentences and use subordinate clauses, as in “when they see someone doing better…” and “so they can help each other…”. However, the range is limited, and complex sentences are often faulty. In “The want to maximize,” the subject and verb do not agree, while “with healthy relation among the peers or colleagues improves…” has an unclear and incomplete structure. The sentence beginning “While the believers…” is also a fragment rather than a complete sentence. There are recurring problems with articles, plurals, and sentence boundaries, which sometimes make the reader work to understand your meaning. Practise building complete sentences around one clear subject and verb, then check agreement and punctuation before adding subordinate clauses.

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