Band 5.5 IELTS Writing Task 2 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 5.5 · Cambridge IELTS 19 · 2026-09-29

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 5.5)

Number of tourists visit tourist place and sees the beauty of the place into their phone's screen while capturing photos and videos and consequently spend less time in enjoying beauty of the destination. This trend has significant drawbacks than positive outcome.

On the one hand, It is very important to capture the photos and video of tourist destination as a part of beautiful memory whereas most individual keep taking photographs of themselves and forget to admire the beauty of the place. For example, recently I came across a video of the temple where all the devotes keep taking photos of idol Ganesh and no one looking at the idol by their own eyes. Such situation changing the importance of visiting temple or church into something which is unnecessory.

Secondly, while visiting destination such as hill stations or beaches, number of tourists put their lives in risk to click best of the photos by going too deep into water at the beach or into hill one the mountain. Last year in Canada, more than 400 tourists died by droning into water and approximately 300 died by falling from mountain peak, reportedly majority of them met to the devastating accident while taking photos and making videos.

Overall, clicking photos at the tourist place is a crucial part of making memories for the lifetime, but live into the present by enjoying the view should be the purpose of visiting any vacation destination. Moreover, doing lifethreatning stunts to make the videos, always be restricted to such places like river, hill stations etc.

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response: Band 6.0

The response addresses both parts of the prompt: explaining the reasons behind the trend of taking photos of oneself without experiencing the place, and discussing whether this is positive or negative. You clearly state your position in the introduction that this trend has 'significant drawbacks than positive outcome.' Ideas are presented, such as the obsession with capturing memories over actual observation and the safety risks associated with extreme photo-taking. However, the development of these ideas is somewhat limited and the supporting examples, such as the unsupported statistics regarding deaths in Canada, border on over-generalisation. Despite these minor limitations in full idea extension, all parts of the prompt are addressed, aligning well with the Band 6 descriptor.

Coherence and Cohesion: Band 6.0

The essay demonstrates a clear overall arrangement and progression of ideas, aided by paragraphing and transitional markers such as 'On the one hand,' 'Secondly,' and 'Overall.' However, cohesion is at times mechanical or faulty. For instance, the transition between sentences within paragraphs can feel abrupt, and referencing is occasionally unclear, as seen in phrases like 'Such situation changing the importance.' Paragraphing is used appropriately to separate different body points, but logical relationships between ideas lack seamless flexibility, placing the response firmly at Band 6.

Lexical Resource: Band 5.5

The vocabulary used is adequate for the task, allowing you to convey your main arguments regarding tourism and photography. You attempt some less common vocabulary, such as 'devotees,' 'devastating accident,' and 'lifethreatning stunts.' However, there are notable lexical errors, inappropriate word choices, and inaccuracies in collocation, such as 'tourist place' instead of 'tourist places,' 'droning into water' instead of 'drowning,' and 'met to the devastating accident.' Spelling and morphological errors ('unnecessory,' 'devotes') occur, though they rarely impede overall communication. This performance aligns with the Band 5 to 6 threshold, reflecting an adequate but error-prone range.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Band 5.0

You attempt a mix of simple and complex sentence forms throughout the essay. However, control over grammar and punctuation is inconsistent, with frequent errors such as subject-verb agreement issues ('Number of tourists visit... and sees'), missing articles ('into hill one the mountain'), and incorrect preposition use. For example, the sentence 'more than 400 tourists died by droning into water' contains both lexical and grammatical inaccuracies. Complex structures are often faulty, and these persistent errors occasionally cause difficulty for the reader, matching the core descriptors for Band 5.

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.