Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 19 · 2026-09-14

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

In many countries nowadays, consumers can go to a supermarket and buy food produced all over the world.

Do you think this is a positive or negative development?

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

Student answer (Band 5.5)

In a fast moving era, people tend to buy desired food items from a supermarket. Some people think that it is a more flexible way of consumption ensuring high quality food items, whereas others argue that it actually derives the local food producers of their due diligence and creates a substancial gap between the consumers and producers. However, I believe it's an overall positive development of reaching the food items to the end users to reduce the costs and maintaing the quality.

On the one hand, Supershops nowadays are available in any part of the world. People are super busy in their daily life and gets little time to go and check each and every product they are buying is genuine and provide a greater variety of products in our day to day life.Supershops regularly check even the slighest of the details of a product through their constant monitoring and quality divison before displaying them. Automation and use of robots reduce the misunderstanding about the price and accelerate the shopping hassel-free. For example, a consumer gets assured if he buys from a superchain shop. This enables food safety and improves public health of a city.

That said, there are other aspects of this scenerio. Supermarkets are designed in a way they make the price tag slightly higher than the regular price. This makes it tougher for the unpriviliged to get the equal right to go and buy whatever they need. The local producers are not benefited from the extra profit the shop is making. That creates a discrimination also this over-dependence solely on supershops are suffering the local markets.

In my opinion, though supershops are a profit making business model, they do provide all kinds of products ensuring the safety and quality. To keep pace with the busy schedule of our mechanical life, the fully automated and regulated supershops are a blessing and adds speed in our life. At the same time, proper guidelines and monitoring should be revised so the food rices don't go beyond the capabilities of the disadvantaged people.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 5.5

The response addresses the prompt by discussing whether the availability of global food in supermarkets is a positive or negative development. The writer clearly states their position in the introduction as an overall positive development, touching upon cost reduction, quality maintenance, and busy lifestyles. Main ideas are introduced, such as convenience and food safety, alongside counter-arguments like higher prices for the underprivileged. However, some ideas are slightly under-developed or vague, such as the mention that local producers are disadvantaged, which is not fully elaborated with strong examples. Nevertheless, all parts of the task are addressed, and a clear stance is maintained throughout, placing this response at Band 6.5, rounded to 6.0 based on the depth of idea extension.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 5.5

The essay is divided into four paragraphs, showing a clear overall arrangement with an introduction, two body paragraphs representing opposing views, and a conclusion. Logical organisation is generally present, although the progression between sentences within body paragraphs can feel slightly mechanical or abrupt. Cohesive devices such as 'On the one hand', 'That said', and 'In my opinion' are used to structure the text, but referencing is sometimes unclear, for instance, the pronoun 'they' in 'they make the price tag slightly higher' creates ambiguity regarding whether it refers to supermarkets or the products. Paragraphing is used appropriately, but overall cohesion suffers from minor structural awkwardness.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.5

The student demonstrates an adequate vocabulary range for the task, attempting less common items such as 'substancial' (spelled 'substancial'), 'automation', and 'under-privileged' (spelled 'unpriviliged'). However, there are noticeable spelling errors ('substancial', 'unpriviliged', 'hassel-free', 'scenerio', 'maintaing') and inaccurate word choices or collocations, such as 'derives the local food producers' instead of 'deprives', and 'food rices' instead of 'prices'. These errors do not impede overall communication, but they restrict the lexical score to a Band 6.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.5

The writer uses a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, demonstrating some control over complex structures ('Some people think that... whereas others argue that...'). However, there is a recurring presence of grammatical errors and awkward phrasing, such as 'reaching the food items to the end users', 'gets little time', 'is genuine and provide', and 'this over-dependence solely on supershops are suffering the local markets'. Subject-verb agreement errors ('supershops... are suffering') and tense or voice inaccuracies are frequent. Punctuation is generally acceptable, but sentence construction flaws place this firmly at the Band 6 level.

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

Browse more IELTS Writing model answers or get your own writing scored by the same AI examiner.