Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 19 · 2026-09-28

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)

Individuals believe that the weekend should be longer for employes and working week should be shorter. I completely disagree with this statement because it may affects organizations and makes people less productive. In this essay, I will discuss the reasons behind this view.

Firstly, I think that if working week should be shorter then it may affects many professions such as healthcare. Healthcare departments demand high work and proper patient care. For instance, many serious patients need proper daily followup. Unavaliability of their consultant doctor may worsen their condition. Therefore, I believe that the healthcare jobs are tough and demand high work load even in the weekends. Moreover, longer weekends also play negative role in job market and affect country economy. Well develped countries work on daily basis and that is the reason behind their success. So, people should focus more on their work.

Secondly, longer weekends should make individuals less productive and lazy and may affect physical health. On weekends, mostly people get rest rather than spending time with family or going out. Excessive rest and sleep makes them tired.However, when person go to job on daily basis, it makes them orgainzed and productive. For example, many researchs shows that daily activity is essential for physical well being and it encourges people to work more in life. As a result , working week should be longer for physical fitness.

In conclusion, from my perspective, weekends should be shorter because it may affects different professions and play important role in worsning of health.

AI examiner evaluation

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

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 5.5

The response presents a clear position throughout, disagreeing with the notion of a shorter working week and longer weekend. The writer attempts to support this stance with arguments regarding essential professions like healthcare and the impact on productivity and physical health. However, the development of these ideas is somewhat limited and occasionally shifts focus, such as the claim that excessive rest and sleep make people tired and that a longer working week promotes physical fitness. These points border on over-generalisation and lack sufficient logical depth. Furthermore, there is a minor task misinterpretation in the conclusion, where the writer accidentally argues that 'weekends should be shorter' rather than the working week, reflecting some minor confusion. Nevertheless, the main parts of the prompt are addressed, placing this comfortably at Band 6.0.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 5.5

The essay displays a coherent overall arrangement with a clear introduction, two body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Paragraphing is used appropriately to separate distinct main ideas. Cohesive devices are employed to link sentences, such as 'Firstly', 'Secondly', 'For instance', and 'In conclusion'. However, referencing and cohesion are sometimes faulty or mechanical. For example, the transitional phrase 'On weekends, mostly people get rest' is awkward, and the logical progression within the second body paragraph stumbles slightly when connecting sleep patterns to the necessity of a longer working week for physical fitness. Paragraph transitions could be smoother, but the logical sequence remains discernible throughout, justifying a score of 6.0.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

The vocabulary used is adequate for the task, allowing the writer to communicate their basic ideas clearly. There are attempts to use less common or topic-specific vocabulary, such as 'professions', 'healthcare departments', 'consultant doctor', and 'productivity'. However, there are frequent word-choice errors, incorrect collocations, and grammatical form issues involving vocabulary, such as 'employes' (employees), 'affects' instead of 'affect', 'Unavaliability' (unavailability), 'daily followup' (daily follow-up), 'Well develped' (Well-developed), 'mostly people' (most people), and 'worsning' (worsening). While these errors do not severely impede communication, they restrict the lexical score to Band 5.5 due to the noticeable inaccuracies and spelling slips.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

The writer attempts a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, using conditional structures ('if working week should be shorter then it may affects...') and relative clauses. However, control over grammar and punctuation is inconsistent. There are numerous grammatical errors, particularly with subject-verb agreement and modal verb usage, such as 'it may affects', 'if working week should be shorter', 'longer weekends also play negative role', 'longer weekends should make individuals', and 'when person go to job'. Punctuation errors also occur, such as the spacing error before the comma in 'As a result , working week...'. These errors can cause occasional difficulty for the reader, though the meaning is generally recoverable, aligning with a Band 5.0.

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

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