Band 6.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.5 · Cambridge IELTS 19 · 2026-09-22

IELTS Writing Task 2 question

More and more people nowadays visit well-known places to take photographs of themselves, without looking at the place.

Why do you think this is happening?

Is it a positive or a negative trend?

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

Student answer (Band 6.5)

The issue of individuals taking selfies in the popular places is widely debated. In these days, many people travel to the famous places in order to click their pictures instead of exploring it. In my opinion, use of social media is the main reason behind it and this trend has a negative impact.

On the one hand, the main reason why this happening is people giving preference to upload pictures on social media. To explain it, nowadays people want to share everything with others as it can help them to be seen by everyone and become famous. As a result , they take photos of themselves and forget to enjoy the beauty of the place with their eyes. For example, whenever young people go to the historical places, they have a target to click as many pictures as they can. This is content for them to upload on instagram or youtube to gain likes.

On the other hand, it has negative impact on both the individuals and the society. Firstly, if someone spend too much time taking photographs, they disturb other people who go with them and affects their experience. To add on, they are not able to learn about history of the place they have been visiting. Moreover, people go to any limit to take selfie, they harm themselves while doing so and sometimes it leads to their death as well. It has been found in a survey that more and more youngsters are losing their life while risking their life to take photos.

To conclude, the bad habit of uploading everything online is one of the reason of visiting popular places to take pictures but not exploring it. While, it has neagtive impact on people's lives but steps taken by government can help to reduce the problems caused.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 6.5

The response addresses all parts of the task by identifying why people take photographs of themselves at popular places without looking at them, and clearly states a position that this is a negative trend. Ideas are extended and supported with relevant examples, such as young people visiting historical places to gather content for Instagram or YouTube. The reasons behind the behaviour, such as the desire to become famous and share experiences on social media, are well articulated. However, the development of the negative impacts could be slightly more fully extended to reach higher band levels, as some points regarding safety and distraction are stated rather briefly. Overall, all requirements of the prompt are satisfactorily covered, demonstrating a clear and relevant response to the task.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 6.5

The essay displays a clear logical organisation and progression throughout. The response is divided into logical paragraphs with an introduction, two body paragraphs exploring causes and effects respectively, and a conclusion. Cohesive devices are used to connect ideas, such as 'On the one hand', 'On the other hand', and 'To conclude'. However, there are some mechanical or slightly unnatural transitions like 'To add on' and minor referencing issues, such as pronoun agreement errors (e.g. 'exploring it' referring back to 'the popular places'). Paragraphing is used sufficiently and appropriately, but the overall flow can occasionally feel slightly formulaic due to standard transitional phrases.

Lexical Resource — Band 6.0

The student uses an adequate range of vocabulary for the task, successfully attempting less common items and topical phrases such as 'historical places', 'social media', and 'content for them to upload'. However, there are noticeable errors in word choice, preposition use, and collocation, such as 'in the popular places' instead of 'at popular places', and 'losing their life while risking their life'. There are also spelling errors like 'neagtive'. These inaccuracies do not impede communication, but they restrict the lexical score to a band 6.0, as the vocabulary lacks the precision and flexibility required for higher bands.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 6.0

The response exhibits a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, demonstrating attempts at varied structures through clauses like 'if someone spend too much time taking photographs, they disturb other people'. However, there are frequent grammatical errors in agreement and tense, such as 'why this happening' (missing auxiliary verb), 'someone spend' instead of 'someone spends', and 'one of the reason' instead of 'one of the reasons'. Punctuation errors also occur, such as the unnecessary space before the comma in 'As a result ,'. While these errors rarely impede overall communication, they prevent the grammar score from reaching a higher band due to a lack of consistent control over complex structures.

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.