Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 19 · 2026-09-26

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

The working week should be shorter and workers should have a longer weekend.

Do you agree or disagree?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Student answer (Band 5.5)

It is argued that workers should have a long weekend and short working days in a week. This essay disagree with the statement because workers do not able to fulfill there daily needs and it effects the growth of businesses, which indirectly affects the nation's economy.

Firstly, shorter working week affect workers daily life. They will not able to fulfil there daily life needs because of shortage of money. Longer weekends force workers to stay free at home, which would increase their expenses instead of income. A recent study in United States illustrates that longer weekends will cause a pressure on low income families. It would be difficult for them to survive in the fast paced world.

Secondly, less working days in a week will affect the growth of companies, which leads to inflation in country. In longer weekends businsses will generate low revenue and government will get low taxes, which indirectly leads to decline in growth of a country's economy. For example, if a country have exports of 100 billion dollars, when workers work five days a week. The exports will decrease significantly, if workers got leave for four days in a week, instead of two days. The buisnesses will not meet the demand of orders and they will not generate enough revenue to give sufficient taxes to government, which results in fall of nation;'s economy.

In conclusion, workers should not get longer weekends and shorter working days because it affects their daily life and their country growth, which leads to increase inflation in country.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5

The student takes a clear position against shorter working weeks and longer weekends. The main arguments centre on financial difficulties for workers and negative impacts on business revenue and national economies. While all parts of the prompt are addressed, the ideas in the body paragraphs lack full development and tend to over-generalise. For instance, the claim that longer weekends automatically increase expenses or cause an immediate decline in exports is asserted rather than deeply supported with robust reasoning. Furthermore, there are minor factual inconsistencies, such as treating a four-day leave as a standard proposed model in the example. Overall, the response fulfills the basic requirements of Task Achievement, aligning with the Band 6 descriptor where relevant ideas are presented but remain somewhat under-developed.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

The essay demonstrates a clear overall arrangement with a traditional introduction, two body paragraphs, and a brief conclusion. Paragraphing is used sufficiently to separate distinct points. However, logical progression within paragraphs is sometimes hindered by mechanical or repetitive cohesive devices. For example, the transition between sentences often relies on basic conjunctions or repetitive referencing, as seen with 'Firstly' and 'Secondly'. Additionally, referencing is occasionally imprecise, such as 'which' clauses that lack clear antecedents or create run-on logical leaps. Cohesion overall is functional, but lacks the flexibility and smooth progression associated with higher bands, making this performance fit comfortably at Band 6.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

The student uses an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, successfully incorporating terms such as 'economy', 'inflation', 'revenue', and 'fast paced world'. However, there are noticeable spelling and word-choice errors that detract from the overall quality, such as 'disagree' instead of 'disagrees', 'there' instead of 'their', 'businsses', and punctuation errors like 'nation;'s'. Attempts to use less common vocabulary sometimes result in awkward collocations or misuse of terms. While communication is not impeded and the vocabulary remains minimally adequate to convey the writer's stance, these frequent slips prevent the response from achieving a Band 7, placing it firmly at Band 5.5.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The writer attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence structures, including conditional forms such as 'if a country have exports of 100 billion dollars...'. However, grammatical accuracy is weak, featuring frequent errors such as subject-verb agreement issues ('workers do not able to fulfill', 'a country have'), tense inconsistencies ('workers got leave'), and missing articles. Punctuation is also problematic in places. While some sentences are successfully constructed, the frequency of basic grammatical errors causes occasional difficulty for the reader and means that error-free sentences are not in the majority. This profile corresponds to a Band 5.

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

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